The Riddle of the Sphinx
Read 'The Riddle of the Sphinx' by 'W. E. B. Du Bois' and provide your summary and literary analysis in the comments section below.
Dark daughter of the lotus leaves that watch the Southern Sea!
Wan spirit of a prisoned soul a-panting to be free!
The muttered music of thy streams, the whisper of the deep,
Have kissed each other in God's name and kissed a world to sleep.
The will of the world is a whistling wind, sweeping a cloud-swept sky,
And not from the East and not from the West knelled that
soul-waking cry,
But out of the South,—the sad, black South—it screamed from
the top of the sky,
Crying: "Awake, O ancient race!" Wailing, "O woman, arise!"
And crying and sighing and crying again as a voice in the
midnight cries,—
But the burden of white men bore her back and the white world
stifled her sighs.
The white world's vermin and filth:
All the dirt of London,
All the scum of New York;
Valiant spoilers of women
And conquerers of unarmed men;
Shameless breeders of bastards,
Drunk with the greed of gold,
Baiting their blood-stained hooks
With cant for the souls of the simple;
Bearing the white man's burden
Of liquor and lust and lies!
Unthankful we wince in the East,
Unthankful we wail from the westward,
Unthankfully thankful, we curse,
In the unworn wastes of the wild:
I hate them, Oh!
I hate them well,
I hate them, Christ!
As I hate hell!
If I were God,
I'd sound their knell
This day!
Who raised the fools to their glory,
But black men of Egypt and Ind,
Ethiopia's sons of the evening,
Indians and yellow Chinese,
Arabian children of morning,
And mongrels of Rome and Greece?
Ah, well!
And they that raised the boasters
Shall drag them down again,—
Down with the theft of their thieving
And murder and mocking of men;
Down with their barter of women
And laying and lying of creeds;
Down with their cheating of childhood
And drunken orgies of war,—
down
down
deep down,
Till the devil's strength be shorn,
Till some dim, darker David, a-hoeing of his corn,
And married maiden, mother of God,
Bid the black Christ be born!
Then shall our burden be manhood,
Be it yellow or black or white;
And poverty and justice and sorrow,
The humble, and simple and strong
Shall sing with the sons of morning
And daughters of even-song:
Black mother of the iron hills that ward the blazing sea,
Wild spirit of a storm-swept soul, a-struggling to be free,
Where 'neath the bloody finger-marks thy riven bosom quakes,
Thicken the thunders of God's Voice and lo! a world awakes!
The Riddle of the Sphinx Summary and Analysis
W. E. B. Du Bois frames this poem as a fierce, prophetic address to a world built on empire, racial hierarchy, and the suppression of women and dark-skinned peoples. The opening images are lush and mysterious, but the poem quickly turns into accusation: the speaker names the brutality of white imperial culture, rejects its moral claims, and challenges the idea that civilization belongs to Europe alone.
The poem moves from lament to indictment to vision. It first recalls voices from the South and from the wider nonwhite world calling for awakening, then erupts into open hatred of exploitation, conquest, and hypocrisy. Du Bois broadens the argument by listing the civilizations and peoples who helped create the world that Europe now claims as its own. In the final movement, the poem imagines a reversal in which the oppressed drag down the boastful powers and a new, more inclusive human order is born. The central tension lies in the poem's blend of rage and prophecy: it is a denunciation of oppression, but also a call for rebirth that depends on Black freedom, female emergence, and a redefinition of human worth.
Tone in The Riddle of the Sphinx
Du Bois's tone is defiant, prophetic, and openly accusatory, with moments of grief and exaltation woven into the denunciation. The emotional atmosphere for the reader is turbulent: the poem feels scorching and unsparing in its hatred of empire, yet it also builds toward hope, as if outrage itself were becoming the energy of renewal. The shifting music of lament, fury, and visionary promise gives the poem a sense of urgency and historical reckoning.
This literary analysis was generated with AI and may contain interpretive differences. Provide your analysis in the comments section.
Themes in The Riddle of the Sphinx
- Anti-imperial revolt - The poem directly attacks colonial power, exposing empire as theft, violence, and moral corruption rather than noble duty.
- Racial uplift and reversal - Du Bois insists that Black, Asian, African, and other nonwhite peoples are not marginal to history but central to it, and he imagines them reclaiming the future.
- Freedom from oppression - Images of waking, rising, and breaking free turn the poem into a cry against social, political, and spiritual imprisonment.
- Female awakening - The repeated call for woman to arise gives the poem a strong gendered dimension, linking liberation with the release of women from patriarchal control.
- Historical memory and civilization - By invoking Egypt, India, Ethiopia, China, Arabia, and classical Europe, the poem argues that civilization is shared, inherited, and inseparable from the contributions of darker peoples.
- Judgment and moral reckoning - The poem looks toward a day of accountability when violence, greed, and deceit will be punished and a truer order will replace them.
Literary Devices in The Riddle of the Sphinx
- Apostrophe - The poem speaks directly to abstract forces and collective figures, such as race, womanhood, and a future world, giving the argument a prophetic urgency.
- Allusion - References to the white man's burden, Christ, David, and the Sphinx connect the poem to religious, biblical, and imperial traditions that Du Bois revises or contests.
- Repetition - The repeated cries, accusations, and commands create momentum and intensify the poem's emotional force, especially in its calls to awaken and descend.
- Catalog - Lists of places, peoples, and crimes build a sweeping historical indictment and emphasize the scale of both exploitation and nonwhite contribution.
- Metaphor - The poem turns political domination into images of burdens, storms, wounds, and burial, making oppression feel physical and overwhelming.
- Personification - The South, the sea, the sky, and even history itself seem alive, which helps the poem treat liberation as a world-changing event rather than a private feeling.
- Free verse - The loose structure supports the poem's breathless rhetoric and lets the lines surge, break, and gather force like a speech or chant.
Symbolism in The Riddle of the Sphinx
- The Sphinx - The title figure suggests mystery, ancient wisdom, and a riddle that civilization has failed to solve: who truly deserves power and moral authority?
- The South - The South stands for Black suffering, spiritual depth, and the source of a call to awaken rather than the complacent center of empire.
- The white man's burden - This phrase symbolizes imperial hypocrisy, the claim that conquest is benevolent while the poem exposes its greed and violence.
- Christ - Christ becomes a symbol of moral judgment and a challenge to Christian societies that practice oppression while professing faith.
- Black Christ - This image points toward a redeemed future in which Black humanity is not merely represented but spiritually central to renewal.
- Storms and thunder - These natural forces symbolize historical upheaval, divine anger, and the eventual shattering of unjust power.
Historical Context of The Riddle of the Sphinx
Du Bois wrote in an era shaped by European imperial expansion, scientific racism, and the global entrenchment of colonial rule. The poem clearly engages the language of imperial apology associated with phrases like the white man's burden, but it overturns that rhetoric by exposing conquest as exploitation and by insisting on the creative power of peoples who were colonized, enslaved, or dismissed by Western power.
The poem also belongs to a broader tradition of Black protest literature and early Pan-African thought. Its global scope, its challenge to racial hierarchy, and its emphasis on the shared contributions of Africa, Asia, and the ancient Mediterranean reflect the intellectual world of Black internationalism and anti-colonial criticism at the turn of the twentieth century.
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