This poem reminds me of Hughe's "I, Too, Sing America". It has the same sort of prophetic announcement, the forecast of a more positive nearby future.

same word we saw in the "Weary Blues", although here, from its association with feet, it seems it is a pure physical tiredness. But poverty, dishonor and all the negative features can bring to a mental fatigue, a collective fatigue in this case.

Hyacinth could make reference again (as in the quote at the beginning) to one of Apollo's "unhappy" loves. Hyacinth was a beautiful and young boy whom the god loved, but he died accidentally. Out of his blood Apollo made the hyacinth flower that we know.

The quote below, which i cannot annotate directly, is from the Roman novel called "Satyricon" from Petronius ( I century AD) and it is a phrase said by a braggart who used to be a slave to his dinner guests, meaning: "Once with my own eyes I saw the Sibyl hanging in a bottle, and when those boys asked: 'What do you want?' she replied: 'I want to die.'"

This makes reference to the ancient greek myth of Apollo and Sybil. The god fell in love with her and gifted her with having as many years of life as the grains of sand that she could pick with her hands. She accepted the gift but refused to sleep with him. Apollo without taking back the gift, failed to add one element to his gift - everlasting youth. Sybil grew old and withered without dying.

In my head this two lines sound like a sort of children's song melody; they have a nice rhythm and stand alone between strong, short and rhythmless sentences and words.

It reminds me of the idea of "das Ding", where love would be "the thing" here. Although it's not a material thing like for example the cathedral in Adams' essay, still the idea remains that it is not love for itself what is important (as the author points its few or none practical uses for biological survival) but its effect on people, which is of a metaphysical power such that it wouldn't be given up for anything.

This reminds of the idea of property and the demarcation of it. Rousseau said that the origin of inequality emanates from the moment someone said "This is mine". Walls and fences and property paperwork, etc. are there to establish the difference between people according to material means.

This part is all about the care he takes to leave the jug, his companion, on the ground, and I particularly like this phrase because even taken out of context it makes certain impact. So I highlighted it.

"Most women do not creep by daylight", yet, she herself does it... more to think the story of woman of the wallpaper might be a metaphor of the narrator's life.

Here we see that writing, even if exhausting, is an act that has a positive mental impact on her, namely relief; and the exterior idea, John's recommendations, make her believe that the one think that keeps her from suffering is a cause of her suffering. Her "submission" blurs her reason, and that may be a real cause of her suffering.

Progress in the Western predominant belief is always associated with wellbeing and happiness. In Adams' text we see technological progress bringing a far more complex issue, a dynamo that not even engineers can quite comprehend and than brings humans back to a metaphysical state of civilization, in which there is a devotion for forces beyond human numbers and calculations. Here we see how social progress, liberal if it pleases, does not benefit directly nor instantly to those who would be the benefactors on paper, but still the privileged classes. What Du Bois means with "the sobering realization of the meaning of progress" is not exactly clear to me, although I hope he means "progress is not what those positivist sold us!".

While the double-consciousness in "The Dynamo and the Virgin" is merely a literary resource that Adams uses to cause a particular effect in his auto-biography, it turns out to be a real issue among the African Americans that Du Bois describes here. In one case it's a choice and it applies to an abstraction and in the other it's a inevitable sort of sentence that applies to a real situation.

It is interesting to see how Adams describes the position of the Americans towards the Virgin. Since the U.S. is a very religious country, and although the variety of these are impressive, one would have thought they would be attracted but such a historically powerful and emblematic symbol. Most U.S. population are after all more or less bound to Christendom. Adams doesn't seem to connect this lack of devotion with the impact of diverse religions and their believes, but rather with an intrinsic behavior to American society, something civic, laic. In Spain, probably one of the most catholic countries in Europe, the force of the Virgin is still to be felt and even people who don't believe -like me- feel a great respect for her figure and what she represents.

Although it seems reasonable to think that the "Lion" is the oppressed working class, it might be interesting to consider the exact opposite. What if the "Lion" is precisely the whole industry, the companies, etc? After all, these have grown and are growing massively and they precisely are fed by the suffering, the hard labour and the poverty of the working class. They even benefit from the illusion of the people's progress when they "rise up", for the industry never loses, it keeps growing; it's a fierce lion, a shark.