Commedia dell’arte is a performance style that originated in Italy emphasizing pantomime,

I love wearing masks. I love transforming my entire being into something completely different. Offstage I’m Culley Emborg, a likeable, friendly, normal kid, but on stage, I can be anyone. Over the years, I have participated in ten musicals and I’ve played a variety of characters ranging from one of the oblivious Who-people in a Dr. Suess-inspired production to a spiteful doll in “Mary Poppins” to a crippled nerd in “13: The Musical.” The best character I’ve played, however, is the stupid yet loveable Leaf Coneybear from “The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee.” As Leaf I wore the most wacky, unique outfit to ever grace my body: a pink bike helmet intended for little girls, knee pads decorated with Dora the Explorer stickers, a collared, tie-dye shirt, and even a long polkadot cape embroidered with a purple “L.” To this day that cape hangs on my bedroom wall and every time I happen to glance at it I reminisce about the odd boy it once belonged to.

The literary device of the mask in Fahrenheit 451, Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith and Lord of the Flies is recurring in each of the stories. The metaphoric mask is a both physical and symbolic object that alters the characteristics of an individual; usually the protagonist. The protagonist either gradually puts on or takes off the mask to change as a person. The mask itself acts how you would expect a real mask to work. A mask typically obscures the vision so that you can only see in one direction, and some obscure our vision to a blur. Despite that, the mask has a much deeper connotation in literature. The obscurity produced by the mask placed on one is not a true mask, but an event or decision significantly altering the traits of an individual. Such a transition is portrayed in literature as the putting on or removal of an actual mask. This makes easier for readers to understand, and creates a perceptible connection between the symbolism and reality. In the Lord of the Flies and Star Wars:

The poem We Wear the Masks by Paul Dunbar is an example of how people hide their feelings due to what others think of them. Like in the book To Kill a Mockingbird, the colored people in town are stereotyped due to their color and looks. The poem states, “We wear the mask that grins and lies, it hides our cheeks and shades our eyes” (Dunbar). When people are stereotyped they hide their feelings to make others happy. Wearing the mask is a symbol of how people cover themselves to get away from their feelings.

Masks have held countless uses and meanings throughout history. Masks have been used in plays, like those of Shakespeare, traditional dances, social gatherings, even as a form of casual or corporal punishment. Although masks have several different uses in different cultural situations, the meaning of the masks is generally the same. Masks are used to conceal an appearance and assume the identity of another. Metaphorically, masks can be used to hide feelings, to protect oneself, and to block out the outside world. Many of these examples are shown in Art Speigelman 's Maus.

The masks act as a way for the guests to block their guilt from being exposed after leaving people beyond the four walls to fend for themselves. “It was towards the close of the fifth or sixth month of his seclusion, and while the pestilence raged most furiously abroad, that the prince Prospero entertained his thousand friends at a masked ball of the most unusual magnificence” (Poe, Par.4). The invitees put on masks to symbolically obscure themselves from the fate of the “Red Death”. Poe is stating that the people are falling into the same arrogant way of thinking as Prospero by trying to escape disease. The party-goers are also hiding from themselves and each other because they selfishly tried to make themselves immune to the disease while leaving the outside world to fend for their lives. The masks being worn also helps give the sense of confidence while being “hidden”, especially Prospero. “ ‘Who dares’-- he demanded hoarsely of the courtiers who stood near him-- ‘Who dares insult us with this blasphemous mockery? Seize him and unmask him-that we may know whom we have to hang, at sunrise, from the battlements!’ (Poe, par.11). As soon as Prospero’s eyes landed on the mummer, there was a surge of confidence that shot up within his body in a split second. The mask upon Prospero’s face caused him to act in a boastful and cocky way to try and defeat the mummer, despite

This mask holds back all the sorrow, protects you from being further destroyed by others words or actions, and covers up the real extreme problems people are facing such as suicide and drug overdose. Both texts use these “masks” metaphorically to show how the people protect themselves.

Commedia dell'arte is a truly popular form of theatre - of the people, by the people, for the people.

(Vonnegut 5)The main reason that the ballerinas had to wear masks was to eliminate the felling of them making people feel unequal because they weren’t as beautiful as the ballerinas. Another example of individuality would be the story of Talia Joy. Talia was diagnosed with two types of cancer, neuroblastoma and leukemia. Due to the cancers, she lost her hair and her hair was what made her feel beautiful. After her diagnosis, she found another way to express her beauty.

What are masks? One usually thinks it is an object the individual puts on and takes off.

In the 1896 symbolic poem “We Wear the Mask,” Paul Laurence Dunbar suggests that people are apathetic to the pain and suffering of others making it easier for one to hide their troubles behind a mask than to confront them. In the beginning, Dunbar uses a spine-chilling tone as he describes the mask while utilizing strange diction to exhibit the deception and protection that the mask symbolizes. Dunbar continues his eerie tone and strange diction as he uses juxtaposition to show that despite the pain people feel the mask they wear gives them a smiling appearance because the world does not care to see people’s hearts in pain. In the middle Dunbar shifts to a sarcastic tone and somber diction as he asserts that the world does not care about the

Furthermore, Masks is another great example used by Sam Gill. He clearly reveals that often times we misinterpret the meaning of mask: that they only hold a space on a shelf among others like itself, otherwise known as a collection. However, masks hold a bigger significance than that. To the Natives, masks are living and when masked performances take place, the deities are present. To view mask as art alone is to minimize the actual beauty and value behind the entire mask and its' function. There is a reason for its existence and it's not just to be creative and productive. Typically, we consider masks as objects that hide or conceal something. In the Native Americans' case, this is the furthest from the truth. Performing a mask in a ritual is

In We Wear the Mask, the author’s purpose is to push the reader to feel something about the way things were in his perspective.

African masks were to establish a different identity for the wearer in order to amuse, teach, or sacrifice.

Masks are one of the most spiritually important art forms developed in Africa. Among the masks many uses were; communicating with spirits and ancestors, serving as teaching aids in gender specific initiation ceremonies, tools for maintaining order, enhancements for reenacted stories and myths, symbols of rank and power, and a record for past leaders. I will be focussing on masks from the first three categories. The masks, which are all Helmet style masks from West and Central Africa, illustrate how artists from different tribes approached symbolism and visual storytelling. They also show what was considered ideally beautiful for each clan.

Alongside Goffman's idea of the ‘masks’, he also mentions staging. He suggests that our self-presentation is constructed and controlled, and it shows the way we ‘set out’ our self-presentation, this includes; the costume we wear, the physical locations and the props we might use. When I’m at