The Use Of Disguise In Wilkie Collins 'The Moonstone'

In the online dictionary, masks are described as being “a covering for all or part of the face, worn to conceal one’s identity”. Andrew Lloyd Webber utilizes masks in The Phantom of the Opera, in such a way that really captivates the viewers and helps to highlight and hide certain aspects. Not only does he use the mask to shield the Phantom’s deformation, he also shows what kind of person the Phantom is with and without the mask, including his behaviour, and actions towards others.

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.

The people we see every day are not always who they appear to be. Our family, friends, peers, work associates, and even our own self’s change who we are sometimes to cope or to seem better off than we are. We put on “Mask” to show the person we want to be seen as and often times people wear more than just one. In Flannery O’ Connor’s, “Good Country People” many of her main characters wore mask. They each had their own reasons that they chose to conceal their real identity. Nevertheless, the characters in O’Connor’s short story wanted to hide their true persona’s or deceive other people. Sometimes it was merely done to cope with their tragic pain and in other cases it was done to deliberately take advantage

In Nathaniel Hawthorne's "The Minister's Black Veil," Mr. Hooper, a Reverend in the town of Milford, surprises his parishioners by donning a conspicuous black veil one Sunday. The town is visibly spooked, yet still curious, about his eerie appearance and profoundly affected by his sermon on secret sin. "A subtle power was breathed into his words. Each member of the congregation, the most innocent girl, and the man of hardened breast, felt as if the preacher had crept upon them, behind his awful veil, and discovered their hoarded iniquity of deed or thought" (2432). The parishioner's expect that Hooper will only don the veil for one day and then remove it, having used the visage to make his point on secret sin, but they are taken aback to

Thesis Statement: In Ralphs Ellison’s, The Invisible Man, there is an evident theme of masking. When I think of a masking, I often think of something used to hiding one’s body or emotions. Within the context of this story masks are used to hide facts and characteristics about individuals whom are being portrayed.

Literally, people wear “masks” to cover their faces. In the poem, “we wear the mask” to hide our true feeling. For example, on the first line “We wear the mask that grins and lies, it hides our cheeks and shaded our eyes…” (Dunbar, 527) shows that do not be deceived by that mask because it is full of lies. “They wear a grinning mask that hides their true feelings. This image of the grinning mask evokes an ancient and ritual African mask used for ceremony, hiding the eyes and face of the wearer with an impersonal expression. In that case, the mask carries a divine dignity, something superhuman, mysterious, and perhaps implying a terrible retribution to the enemy in the future.” (“Overview: ‘We wear the mask’ ”) Plus, by wearing the masks, people cannot see the emotion shown on the face. People also cannot look into each other’s eyes to understand the thoughts. According to Huff, “To ‘hide our cheeks’ means to stiffen the face so as not to reveal genuine emotion, and to ‘shade our eyes’ has the triple meaning of adopting an indirect or deferring manner, of avoiding the eye contact that implies a shared understanding of the situation, and of internalizing society's artificial barriers so that an individual will not embarrass himself or others by appearing to desire things that are clearly beyond his reach.”

In the Nathaniel Hawthorne’s short story “The Minister’s Black Veil”, Hawthorne uses a black a veil as a symbol in the story in order to represent something much greater. In the short story, Mr. Hooper gets judged by his close peers for wearing a black veil upon his face, however they fail to realize that Mr. Hooper has a reason behind him wearing this upon his face. The black veil symbolizes some type of object used which hides one’s true persona. Mr. Hooper asks his auditory "Why do you tremble at me alone?... Tremble also at each other!” In this quote, Hawthorne let’s the reader know that we should all fear each other, regardless if we have something that is physically covering our face or not. A veil lies upon everyone’s face which hides people’s true persona which they all don’t show at first but later in time reveal what is hidden underneath. Everyone at the church had negative feedback towards Mr. Hooper’s black veil, many asked why he did it while others wondered if he was hiding something. Mr. Hooper refused to remove his veil even after his fiance had asked him why he wore it and if he could remove it, this proves that Mr. Hoopers character was a strong believer

“You can disguise any set with lights and shadows” - indeed one can, even with a paper lantern. It simply depends on what type of “set” one has. It could be a scene, a place or even a person, as in the case of A Streetcar Named Desire. Tennessee Williams describes the main character in his play Blanche DuBois, as a woman, desperate to cover her true self. She believes she is a victim of the harsh world that deprived her from love and forced her to succumb to indecent desires. Feeling guilty and filthy, she tries in many ways to cleanse herself from the mistakes of the past, which haunt her in the present. Spending all her time wearing white, being clean, presenting a certain image, Blanche finds herself most comfortable in the dark. Although Blanche

In the short story “The Minister’s Black Veil” by Nathaniel Hawthorne describes a minister that had committed a sin in his life that he was very ashamed of. So therefore, the minister wanted to hide his face from the world while using a black veil. Mr. Hooper, the minister, describes the masks as a symbol of a truth that most people are very uncomfortable to discuss with anyone. Underneath the black veil, the minister develops a fear, many people misunderstand him, and he is left by his wife to live alone in the village. Today, alienation, loneliness, hypocrisy can be caused by a tragic event or by a wrong doing.

We wear masks to hide our real personality from someone. In the stories we read in class everybody masks something from a family member. In Charles by Shirley Jackson it states “Charles?” She said “We don’t have a Charles in the kindergarten.” (Jackson pg.11). Laurie is a good kid at home, but at school he gets into all kinds of trouble. Every time Laurie gets into trouble he blames it on a kid named Charles. Another story we read was Fatal Flower by Laurence Yep. In the text it states “She blinked when she saw the beautiful stranger gazing up at her. The stranger’s face had eyebrows like the leaf of the

In the short story, “The Minister’s Black Veil” by Nathaniel Hawthorne, the townspeople have a few ideas as to what Hooper’s veil represents or hides. Some of the villagers believe that the minister, Mr. Hooper has committed a shameful sin. The idea of the town’s people somewhat surfaces while Elizabeth is speaking to the minister himself and says, “for the sake of your holy office, do away this scandal” (1316). Therefore proving to him, that the people of his own parish have created assumptions as to the many sins he may have taken part in to wear the black veil over his face. Whereas “one or two affirmed that there was no mystery at all, but only that Mr. Hooper’s eyes were so weakened by the midnight lamp, as to require a shade”; a shade that would hence be provided by the black veil because it would “give a darkened aspect to all living and inanimate things” (1313, 1312). At that point in the story however, one cannot be one hundred percent certain as to which predicament is correct. What the author does do is throw in a couple of symbols that may persuade some

A positive nuance of the veil is at the end of the story where the townspeople describe the veil as a “sable veil” (line 370). Although sable

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

In "The Minister's Black Veil", a gripping powerful parable by Nathaniel Hawthorne, Mr. Hooper as well as the black veil, that shrouds his face, is a representitive of sin. Throughout the short story, Mr. Hooper is a kind and caring parson that provides religious services for the town. Even though poor Mr. Hooper has not visibly done anything wrong to this town, the sheer action of wearing a black veil obscures what people think of him. It is said by an old woman, towards the beginning of the story, "He has changed himself into something awful, only by hiding his face." This quote provides insight on much of what sin does to an individual, it amplifies a wrong doing. The town disregards all of who Mr. Hooper was, "a gentlemanly person" and

A facade is, “an outward appearance that is maintained to conceal a less pleasant or creditable reality” (Dictionary.com). Baba appeared to be a powerful and admired man who many in his town looked up to. His power and name is revealed as a facade when reading the book. Despite Baba being a well-respected man, he is a negligent father. This is his less pleasant reality that is hidden by his social status and name.