We Wear The Mask By Paul Laurence Dunbar

In the text “New Jim Crow,” Michelle Alexander argues her belief of control of African Americans, more specifically males, through a racial caste system. To begin her argument, Michelle starts by speaking of a man named Jarvious Cotton, who, like his ancestors, cannot vote, but not because he is a slave, but because he has been labeled a felon and is currently on parole. She believes that “in each generation, new tactics have been used for achieving the same goals” and that one of the primary goals of the founding fathers was to deny African Americans full U.S. citizenship (1). Michelle believes that this goal has been maintained because today and throughout history, a high percentage black men in the United States have been legally barred

Having been stranded on a deserted island for so long with no one but a few children, he was hungry and mentally broken. Aware of his imperfections, He proceeded to put on a mask made of paint to act as a camouflage. It not only made him well-hidden from others, but it also hid him from his own guilt, mistakes, and regrets. “The mask was a thing on its own, behind which Jack hid, liberated from shame and self-consciousness.” Jack was also described as slowly becoming more inhumane. Children near him described his laughing as becoming more of a “snarling.” The mask had taken control over Jack and made him into a monster. The mask blinded him from the significance of his actions. He later witnesses the deaths of two other children and feels no remorse. The mask had caused Jack to change as a character entirely and become something he originally

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.

In the novel The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas and the poem “We Wear the Mask” by Paul Dunlap, the authors highlight how hiding one’s own identity comes with consequences. For example, in We Wear the Mask, by Paul Laurence Dunbar, the author shares his frustrating experience of having to wear a mask and hide who he is. For example, in the first stanza, the author writes, “We wear the mask that grins and lies,” and that “it hides our cheeks and shades our eyes” (1-2). Here, the author is saying how people put on a happy appearance to hide how they truly feel. However, putting on a mask to cover how you feel is a problem because it results in no change for the better.

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.

In Paul Laurence Dunbar's “We Wear the Mask” poem he uses different types of rhetorical patterns. On rhetorical pattern he puts “we wear the mask” in the poem three times. Paul used this as a rhetorical pattern because first of all it’s the title and by reading or being heard we wear the mask, is trying to catch the audience attention by repeating those four words. We wear the mask could be attended to african Americans because he's a African American himself, or just people in general. Whatever the intended audience is, Paul is letting them know we wear the mask meaning that we are not acting who we really are and instead we're pretending to be someone we're not.

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

The poem “Let America Be America Again,” by Langston Hughes, brings up two sides to the discussion about what America means to people. It discusses the fact that to some people, America is an amazing land, where people are free from oppression and have rights. The poem, however, does not neglect the fact that there are people who have never experienced those freedoms and rights, nor does it neglect the fact that the people who have not experienced those rights also live in America. The issue about people living in America but never experiencing rights that are thought to be American was very prominent at the time that Hughes wrote the poem. Now the discussion is not “what it means to live in America” but “what it means to love America.” The issue contemplates whether someone can love America and still notice its flaws; or, if in order to love America one must neglect its ugly truths and only focus on the great accomplishments. One of the main causes for this discussion derive from the fact that right-winged people claim that Obama does not love America. However, they fail to see that in order to love something you must also notice its flaws and fix them.

“Like circus performers, we smear on makeup to become someone else. Far beyond applying a little lip gloss or hair dye, our mask attempts to cover up who we really are. Our mask attempts to cover up who we really are […] what we’ve been through, what we know to be important, and what we are afraid to share with others”. (O’Leary, 36) John O’Leary focuses heavily on the concept of taking off our masks in his inspirational book, On Fire: The 7 Choices to Ignite a Radically Inspired Life. What O’Leary means by this analogy is that we should all break the barriers which we have erected to protect ourselves from the world, walls that were built after being hurt, experiencing something traumatic, or perhaps after being betrayed. However, such walls oftentimes do not benefit ourselves in the way that we may wish. Instead, more often than not, our masks do the opposite, and they isolate us from what we as humans need most: friendship, companionship, and love.

Shortly after the civil war the fourteenth amendment was passed which granted citizenship to all individuals born or naturalized in America; this group included slaves both former and current. However, individuals of African American appearance would be treated like aliens in their own country for years to come. In the eighteen eighties Jim Crow Laws were passed that segregated Black individuals and often subjected them to humiliating conditions. These conditions exasperate and trouble all of the characters in the novel Black No More. In this novel by George Schuyler Blacks are degraded and oppressed because of the color of their skin. This oppression is caused by ignorant prejudices that individuals in the novel hold. Schuyler uses satire, elevated language, and imagery to further support the idea that ignorance can be as great a power or greater than the greed caused for money.

In the Corner Miss Ella dedicates her time and energy to running the Martin Luther King Jr. Recreation Center. She is able to make connections with children of all ages, ranging as old as high school. The children who come are able to participate in productive after school activities, rather than spending their time on the Corner. Ultimately, Miss Ella feels that by providing opportunities at the recreation center, she is able to keep kids from being involved in the Corner, for as long as possible. While her efforts are genuine and work to some extent, the center itself is not merely enough to keep the wild-hearted boys of the C.M.B. crew off the streets. The children of the Corner lack motivation to go to school, finding gallivanting on the streets and stirring up trouble to be much more enticing. If a preventative program was implemented that focused on both prevention and the promotion of positive behaviors, such as completing high school, the potential benefits to society could include a few less criminals on the streets or tangled up in the justice system.

I remember how the flowering day of April 18th 2001, blossomed into not only the most life-altering day of my life, but also the worst day of my childhood. It was early in the afternoon at school when a recurrent knock whacked the wooden door packed with the fine-looking visual artwork of my kindergarten class. My teacher halted her instruction to ajar and answer the door, and when she saw who it was requesting her presence she immediately stepped outside of the room door to speak with that person in a remote manner…moments later, my teacher retraced hers steps back into the classroom, granted me her salutations and called me for dismissal.

“What is equality?” one might ask. We all have different views on specific topics and can describe what something truly means to one’s self like in the 3 text, “I have a dream,” by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr (published; 8/28/1963, genre; narrative and argumentative), “If we must die,” by Claude Mckay (published; 1919, genre; narrative and lyric), & “Harrison Bergeron,” by Kurt Vonnegut Jr. (published; October 1961, genre; satirical & dystopian science-fiction short story). In all 3 texts the authors are giving their touch on equality. Equality can convey being treated the same when a colored and a white man/woman are next to each other as Dr. Martin Luther King Jr says. You can also see equality as Mckay who thinks it’s being on the same level of strength and worth as a white man being in the shoes of a colored man. Or equality can be being exactly the same in every way as anyone around you in every exact way in Vonnegut’s eyes. All these 3 authors have a particular view on how to answer “What is equality?” and we can compare their ideas.

When the speaker recommends wearing the ‘mask’, I think he seems genuine. I say this because in the final line he says,”But let the world dream otherwise,/We wear the mask!” In saying this, he seems generally supportive of the wearing of the ‘mask’, and using it to hide the true person beneath. Also, seeing that he is so eager to recommend the ‘mask’, it seems as if he wears it too. And with his wearing of it, he obviously would want others to wear and ‘try it out’, per se. All in all, it seems to me that Dunbar is very genuine when he recommends wearing the ‘mask’.

Poetry has always been a mirror to see unseen emotions and to hear unheard thoughts. Magical words used in an artistic way allows the reader to feel what the poet is feeling, to listen what the poet is listening and to share what the poet is going through. The two poems “I’m Nobody! Who are You?” by Emily Dickinson, and “We Wear the Mask” by Paul Laurence Dunbar are two classical works of poetry. While Dunbar shares agonizing experience of an entire community, Dickinson shares her thoughts about individual characteristic and personality; in fact, she cleverly wins the case of an introvert. Both these poems are independent of each other in terms of thought as well as from literary perspective.