Double-Consciousness in Audre Lorde’s Coal Essay -- Audre Lorde Coal E

Double-Consciousness in Audre Lordes Coal There is a double-consciousness, according to W.E Burghardt Du Bois, in which we view ourselves through a mask. Underneath of this veil is the true self. The person that we are in our purest state. The veil itself, however, is how society sees us and our realization of that projection. Looking in a mirror, both layers can be seen. However, the true self is still covered, muddled, unclear beneath the sheer outmost shell of expectation. In her verse Coal, Audre Lorde alludes to this concept through the triple image of a piece of combust and a diamond. As a black woman, Lorde only transforms from coal to diamond when she embraces her blackness as coal and, ironically, rejects the societal pressure to conform by speaking her words and comprehend that she is black and coal. In the beginning, Lorde equates herself with a piece of coal. She scans that she is the total black(2068). As a piece of coal, she is black both inside and out. Being externally black, she may still be oppressed by the society just most her, her identity world engulfed by the world. In the state of coal, she is merely being spoken from the earths inside(2068). Words would be repress by the surrounding layers of dirt that engulf her. As coal, Lorde is susceptible to the double-consciousness draw by Dubois. The poem begins with an I, and continues in the second line to say is the total black(2068). She separates herself from the total black here, indicating that her true self is non necessarily within that total black(2068). She alike separates herself from the bad grammar associated with analphabetism that characterizes many black communities. The total black, is not Lorde herself, but in fact,... ...ry occurs when Lorde says At this point in time, I believe that women carry within ourselves the misfortune for fusion of these two approaches so necessary for survival, and we come closest to this faction in our poetry (Lorde 2 210). Thus, through further exploration of Lorde as a person, new insight is given to the poem Coal. The poem also inadvertently raises questions about other poems when upheld as an example for comparison to reform Lordes feelings about double-consciousness. This greater understanding and discourse on the able of double-consciousness is vital to understanding the poem Coal because it is vital to the identity of Audre Lorde as a person. Since her writing is almost exclusively and scrutinizingly about herself, learning about the broader topics and events in Lordes life are intrinsic to the specific poem of Coal.