The Comet (5 pts): Dismantling Racial Discrimination Through Tragedy

With the current state of the world right now, I feel that this is a better time than ever to show appreciation for the African American authors of the past and the present. As I looked through the reading list, I came across W.E.B. DuBois' name, along with his work The Comet. Though I had heard of DuBois from my high school history classes, I did not know any of his works.

When I saw that The Comet was written in 1920, I wasn't expecting much out of the "sci-fi department". Normally when I think of what defined sci-fi back then, my mind tends to lean towards the film Metropolis. Robots, utopias, weird machines, anything futuristic. How could a single comet compare to that without feeling inferior?

It all made sense after I finished reading. The sci-fi element was just the backdrop to the main theme of the story; the comet was the catalyst for the realization that racial discrimination is not only an absurd concept, but it unfortunately takes a serious tragedy for people to see that.

I could talk about the whole story, but there was one part that stuck out to me the most, that being the scene when the messenger and the woman are on the roof.

The scene on the roof was what I would consider the most important scene in the story. While the woman and the messenger sit on the roof and stare up at the sky, they talk about how different their lives are. The woman asks the messenger if he's always had to work, and how she was rich so she never worked in her life. They also come to the realization that death is inevitable, no matter your race, and the woman gives my favorite quote of the story, stating, "...how foolish our human distinctions seem-now," (DuBois 21). It's very bittersweet to see that the woman realizes how absurd the concept of racial discrimination is, but only after tragedy has struck the city and she and the messenger are (seemingly) the only people left alive. I also really like the messenger's quote, "Death, the leveler," (DuBois 22). It's so true! No matter our race, death will always come for us in the end. This quote seems to resonate with the protagonists as well, as they begin to see each other not as a white woman and a black man, but as two beings on God's earth, only defined by their genders.

I believe that this story is well worth the read, especially with all of the protests and discrimination going on today. It truly makes you wonder if, after all these years since this story has been written (100, to be exact), racist people will finally see how ludicrous racial discrimination is, and if it will take a deadly comet hurtling towards earth that will wipe out the majority of the world's population to see that.