We Wear The Mask Analysis

It speaks of how African Americans have to hide behind a mask that hides all their sorrow and pain. Dunbar questions why we have to wear the mask, “Why should the world be overwise, In counting all our tears and sighs? Nay, let them only see us, while We wear the mask.”(918). He speaks of how all of this should not be happening but in the end everyone is still hiding who they are and what they are really feeling. This poem could account for more than just African Americans. Everyone has worn a mask at one point in their lives but the real question is why? Temptations like in “Wife of His Youth” or to get away like in “’Member Youse a Nigger” have had major effects on people and their lives. Being an African American was a hard life for a long time because slavery and the civil war cause many deaths and many families to be broken

The theme of masks is a significant theme throughout the book through the book. In all war people use

In the poem, “We Wear the Mask’, the narrator, Paul Lawrence Dunbar, expresses the pain African American experienced during the slave trade and how the slaves learned to suppress their emotions. The poem shows a contrast between African American’s social faces and their “bleeding hearts”. The tone of the poem is not a corrective tone, but rather an explanatory one. In considering the time period, it would make sense that the narrator would be careful about insulting the white community. In the first stanza the tone starts as explanatory in just speaking of the masquerade and state of oppression. Then the last two stanzas are very matter of fact. When the narrator sarcastically states, “Why should the world be otherwise”. Showing

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 lyric poem “We wear the mask” by Paul Laurence Dunbar is a poem about the African American race, and how they had to conceal their unhappiness and anger from whites. This poem was written in 1895, which is around the era when slavery was abolished. Dunbar, living in this time period, was able to experience the gruesome effects of racism, hatred and prejudice against blacks at its worst. Using literary techniques such as: alliteration, metaphor, persona, cacophony, apostrophe and paradox, Paul Dunbar’s poem suggests blacks of his time wore masks of smiling faces to hide their true feelings.

Paul Laurence Dunbar, dispatches the cold troubles of African Americans in the lyrical poem, "We Wear the Mask." In this poem, Dunbar links imagery, rhythm, rhyme, and word choice to in order to institute a connection to the reader. From reading the poem, one can infer that Mr. Dunbar is speaking in general, of the misery that many people keep concealed under a grin that they wear very well. But if one were to go further and take the time to research Mr. Dunbar’s selection of this piece and the era of which this poem was written, one would come to understand that this poem focuses entirely on Paul Laurence Dunbar’s viewpoints on racial prejudice and the struggle for equality for the African-American’s of his time period. Though this

When something consumes you such as a society and tells you what you have to be, how do you avoid the mask? The poem “We Wear the Mask” by Paul Dunbar and the novel “Fahrenheit 451” by Ray Bradbury both use a mask as a symbol. The mask symbolizes how closed off people are, and how they hide themselves and their emotions from society. These “masks” are worn to protect yourself from the cruel and treacherous society that has been created. The new society has taught people how to cover up their true emotions with these fake smiles and shining eyes.

Dually Randall and Paul Laurence Dunbar are two African American writers living during the early twentieth century. These men did not know each other, however, they both encountered the same hardship of being an African American living before the civil rights movement. Both men use poems that emphasize sound, structure and imagery to express what they experienced during that harsh time. A careful analysis of “We Wear the Mask” and “Ballad of Birmingham” expose that the shadows cast on their skin has a lasting impression.

We try to hide our flaws, so we wear a mask to conceal our imperfections. We are hurt and unable to fully recover, so we put on a mask. We are a monster, so we wear a mask to hide our vile and devilish ways. We want to appear to okay, even though inside we are dying a little bit each day, so we put on a mask. Wearing a mask is a lot like being a wife and a mother. A wife and mother is many other things, such as a cook, a nurse, a taxi driver, a cheerleader, a lover, a daughter, a worker, and maybe even a student amongst other things. We juggle our self between all these different persona’s. In O’Connor’s, “Good Country People” many of her characters wore mask to conceal the things they didn’t want seen. Hulga pretended to be a rude, uncaring brat to hide her hurt she felt from losing her leg at an early age. Manley Pointer disguised himself as a Bible salesman to take advantage of people, when he was nothing more than a wolf in sheep’s clothing. While the matriarch of the family, Mrs. Hopewell insisted that everything was fine. Everyone has their own way of getting through tough situations and circumstances and these country people proved they were no different from the rest. “In one of her essays, “The Regional Writer” Flannery O’Connor spoke of, “the particular crossroads where time and place and eternity somehow meet.” (Driskell and Brittain, The Eternal Crossroads). These such characters in this

They also seek to show how this facade separates and alienates you from society, peers, reality, and spirituality. " 'Have patience with me, Elizabeth!' cried he, passionately. 'Do not desert me, though this veil must be between us here on earth. Be mine, and hereafter there shall be no veil over my face, no darkness between our souls! It is but a mortal veil--it is not for eternity! O! You know not how lonely I am, and how frightened, to be alone behind my black veil. Do not leave me in this miserable obscurity forever!' 'Lift the veil but once, and look me in the face,' said she.'Never! It cannot be!' replied Mr. Hooper." " 'Tremble also at each other! Have men avoided me, and women shown no pity, and children screamed and fled, only for my black veil? What, but the mystery which it obscurely typifies, has made this piece of crape so awful? When the friend shows his inmost heart to his friend; the lover to his best beloved; when man does not vainly shrink from the eye of his Creator, loathsomely treasuring up the secret of his sin; then deem me a monster, for the symbol beneath which I have lived, and die! I look around me, and, lo! On every visage a Black Veil!' "

During the reading of Ellison’s story masking is evident through the epilogue and chapter one. The theme of masking has different meanings in this story. One meaning shows masking as an unwillingness of acceptance to an individual, whom is not accepted in society. The narrator is masked because people see in him as what they want to perceive him to be. Masking, in this meaning, has a strong sense of racial prejudice. Whites rarely see black people as individual human beings, as showing during the battle royal. Another meaning of masking is suggestion of separation from society. While the narrator is in his hole, he is not there mentally, but he is there physically. He cannot be seen by society. He is masked because he chooses to remain away. Masking, in this meaning, is similar to hibernation, with the narrator’s choice to remain in his cave and think.

The figurative language in a given poem usually correlates to the theme and, nevertheless, gives it personality in some way. In “We Wear the Mask,” the figurative language is darker, ordinarily connecting it to the theme of hiding your true feelings behind your “mask”. The writer, Paul Laurence Dunbar, uses personification the most in his poem, moreover, creating an image that correlates with the theme. Personification most easily creates an image that the writer can shape to connect with the theme. Dunbar uses this personification in a darker way, to connect with the more serious theme of hiding your feelings behind your imperceptible “mask”. “We wear the mask that grins and lies, it hides our cheeks and shades our eyes,” is personifying the mask (Lines 1-2). Since this poem is mainly about hiding behind our alleged mask, it seems reasonable that Dunbar would personify the mask. Since he did so, the mask is given another level of depth that allows us to see the mask as the main object of the theme. The theme is developed by using this personification of the mask. Although diction and figurative language are important for developing the theme, they are not the only structure elements that can do

Dunbar and his work were mentioned in major magazines and newspapers. By 1896 Dunbar had published his third collection, but first professionally published volume, Lyrics of Lowly Life. In this volume Dunbar wrote a poem called, “We Wear the Mask.” In the poem, “We Wear the Mask”, lies and deceit, suffering, race, and society and class are used as themes to illustrate the African American life during and before Dunbar’s lifetime. The purpose of this analysis is to explore certain

 On the way to this crescendo, Dunbar continues to add depth and breadth to the mask metaphor. “Cheeks and eyes are being hidden, and in “mouth with myriad subtleties” At this point in the poem there is little to lead the reader

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.