John O ' Leary 's On Fire

This proves Gergen’s thesis, “I doubt that people normally develop a coherent sense of identity, and believe that to the extent that they do, they may experience serve emotional distress” (172). By having several masks or selves, is how we are able to adapt to changing society. With these multiple masks we are able to achieve acceptance and know who we are as individuals. Throughout life we must adopt masks when facing different circumstances; it is through these masks that we see how we change as individuals. If we spend our lives trying to stick to one mask, we can find ourselves to feel lost, depressed, or invisible. Change is good; however we must still stay true to ourselves when using masks. They are a part of us as individuals but they are not us.

Which is also the role the play in Dunbar’s poem. The mask is a way to represent the ways in which people hide and lie about what they are actually feeling underneath. Dunbar is also trying to inform us that masks are a way of self-preservation. The speaker of this poem seems to be very laid back and calm while discussing this, he seems to be at peace or have accepted that this is the way in which things are. It is also never clearly stated if the speaker is male or female, it is just assumed that the speaker is a “he”, this leaves it open to a universal voice, so that it is not specifically limited to any one individual or group of individuals feeling this way.

We plaster a smile onto our face to cover up what we feel inside. “With torn and bleeding hearts, we smile.” (Dunbar line 4). In Paul Dunbar’s poem, “We Wear The Mask,” he portrays this idea in the way he uses “the mask,” as a symbolic reference to the way humans disguise their feelings. Dunbar assosciates his own personal feelings and experiences in this poem.

How many times have you shown your friends and your family a face which doesn’t belong to you? A face which is not your real face? I’m sure we have all shown faces other than ours to people when we first met them. It could be for the fear of their judgment if they found out who we truly are. It could be a sense of insecurity that we’re not good enough, or it could just be a habit that we gained throughout our lives. Regarding this, the Egyptian writer, Salma Shallash, in her short story, “the other face”, endeavors to answer this question: Should we show our true faces to people around us sooner than late? Or should we try to keep it from showing way too soon? Shallash’s purpose is to indoctrinate, in a nostalgic tone, not only the couples but also everyone the idea on what our relationships should be built up.

In the stories of “We Wear the Mask” by Paul Lawrence Dunbar and “The Story of an Hour” by Kate Chopin both authors develop the theme within these two stories. The view of point that these two stories develop is that people go by what is on the outside of your appearance not by what your emotions are or how you feel in the inside.

In my personal reading book, Wren, the main character puts on a mask to boosts everyone's hope around her as she makes herself, and everyone around her feel more safe with the current situation. As they are stuck in a world where they are forced to work for these humans who make her risk her life to catch dangerous criminals, and if they deny they are faced with death. Another character, Callum, partners with Wren. They are both scared, and you can see because it shows what they think in their head, but they put on a mask, to remain brave and tough as they are forced to follow orders, by their human “bosses”. In another book i'm reading, Ashes, the main characters, Tom Alex, and Ellie, Find themselves in a situation where their daily life is fear, because the earth as they know it, is on the verge of destruction. Ellie who is nine years old, is easily frightened and angered, so Alex and Tom both have to put on masks and change their personas to big strong warriors and act brave so they can make Ellie feel secure in the unsecure world they are stuck in. “Masks confine or suppress your true emotions” but really they help express yourself more than you could without a mask. Many think that masks are used to hide emotion but in reality they are used for more. Transitioning from work to home, as an

“This debt we pay to human guile; With torn and bleeding hearts we smile,” this is a quote from the poem, “We Wear The Mask,” This poem explains how people hide their sorrows from the world. This is important because it shows how mask themselves. They hide behind the mask that could hurt them, which proves that it is harmful to wear a mask.

Our textbook Philosophy: An Introduction to the Art of Wondering includes a section entitled “The Masks We Wear,” which discusses how individuals “wear different masks,” or participate in various situations differently (Christian, 2012, p. 116). Different situations may require distinct behaviors

A common discovery that many people make sooner or later throughout their life is that they feel so much more comfortable with the protection of a mask. They experience a feeling of freedom, because they feel like they are anonymous. People do not have to worry about what others will think about them because they do not know who is behind the mask. The person with the mask can say or do whatever he/she wants without consequence. There are many different types of façades. One would be commenting as an anon online. Another would be a literal mask that one would see at a masquerade party. A mask forms a sort of protective barrier that defends ones social status granting freedom to act in whatever way one pleases.

Masks, an article by George Ulrich, states, “In ‘play’ these children and adults are able to become something they are not; something that cannot be... One of the most important things that masks do is transform the identity of the wearer…” These parts of the text shows how masks can change them and who the wearers really are. This affects people because they spend their life being someone that they aren’t. Some would say that they help people become a person that they want to be.

“We wear the Mask” by Paul Laurence Dunbar is a late 19th century poem that millennials can relate with due to a shared trait. The poem touches on the problem of individuals hiding their true identity via a mask, thus hurting themselves in order to have a fitting identity. The poem therefore can be applied to the conditions of the aspiring young adults here in the Silicon Valley as we all wear masks in order to clash and fight our way to the pursuit of happiness.

I was despairing because of the nonexistent mirror I was hiding behind in a nonexistent, abandoned building, in an attempt to keep myself safe and in which everyone assumed I would clamber out of. I did, in fact, crawl out from behind my cracked mirror and slowly creep out of the desolate building into what I had heard people call the real world. In the real world, I learned that my actions affected others, and my words had the power to aid others in their own attempts to clamber out from behind their mirrors and to live in the real world alongside me. Of course, I never used words, too afraid that they would hurt more than they’d ever help; that I’d do something I would regret—again. Who would’ve thought that my silence was the one thing I have come to regret the

In the poem, We Wear the Masks, the poet wrote about what we hide and why we hide it behind the mask. In the poem, it states, “We wear the mask that grins and lies,It hides our cheeks and shades our eyes--This debt we pay to human guile:With torn and bleeding hearts we smile, And mouth with myriad subtleties”(Dunbar). Dunbar wanted to explain that we hide or give distort vibes when showing our emotions or feelings to others. Some hide themselves and their true feelings behind their mask, people lie to loved ones, people shove their hurt feelings out the door when it comes to showing them. People wear masks usually, but that doesn't exactly mean it's okay to wear

Masks can be very serious or can be taken as a joke, and a lot of people use them as a joke, but others very seriously, for example people are who fake all the time are using a mask to create a persona. I use the mask for a joke whether or not people take me serious, I use it as a joke. The mask I use to become a “new person” is the Vendetta mask because the story behind the mask tells a lot. The story behind the mask, makes me feel like I can fix the world and turn it into what it is supposed to be. A civil place, where there is no crime and hate like how God intended the world to be, but it all falls apart when I take the mask off. For some people even when they take the mask off they still think and feel that they are still that person that

According to the New Dictionary of the History of Ideas masks were used in the middle Egyptian period to mean a “second skin.” The idea of “masking” dates back to at least 30,000 B.C.E and we’ve used masks not only for medical purposes, but I would also like to use masks as a metaphor for the unaccepting nature of our society. I don’t want to assume what you do in your free time but I don’t think in this current time period that most of us are using masks to communicate with dead people, but if you do, you do you. Masks in our modern society are personas that people can hide behind so they can fit into a certain group of people and feel accepted. Which can be detrimental to our self-esteem.