Looking Past Racial Discrimination: Understanding "The Comet" Using 'The Myth of Race' Savannah McClendon College

Early 20th century Eugenicist Madison Grant, according to Robert Sussman’s The Myth of Race, believed that the union of black and white would “be the end of civilization” (183). However, W.E.B Du Bois’ short story, “The Comet”, sees the same union as its rebirth. The protagonists of this story uncover common ground in the form of a shared spirituality, which allows for them to suppress the alienation felt between them as the result of racial othering, and to form a higher connection. This is especially prevalent in a passage on page 21, contained by: “Yet as the two… but they put it away”. In this passage, the use of language suggests that the shared spirituality between Jim and Julia causes them to other everyone besides one another as the surviving children of God, thus creating an Adam and Eve narrative in the microcosm of New York in the 1920s, a period plagued by movements of racial integrity.

While the characters’ shared religion is more explicitly established in other passages from the short story, there are several choice words in this excerpt which suggest the presence of a religious mind. First, Jim and Julia look upon the dead with “reverence”, where to revere is most commonly used in the context of praising God, and...