We Wear The Mask Dunbar Analysis

Realism is a combination of literary technique used to create the text. In Realism, everything is real, meaning it only focuses on the cold, hard truths of life. Realism is very detailed, and everything in the story, for example, events, places, and characters are common place. I believe Realism could be the cruelest form of writing because of the way it focuses on the mind and its reaction and its abnormalities.

African American literature from the Colonial era through Reconstruction shows how African Americans were always treated differently and many of them had to either ignore the awful things the white people said to them, or they had to hide behind a mask of someone everyone tells them to be. One of these incidences of having to just ignore society was in the folktale “’Member Youse a Nigger” when John spend his days keeping quiet and doing only the things that would set him free. While the story “The Wife of His Youth” by Charles Chestnutt and the poem “We Wear the Mask” by Paul Laurence Dunbar were about the effects that society has on ‘colored’ people. Both stories showing how people feel it is okay to pretend to be someone that they aren’t

Realism is the period in American literature from 1860 to 1890. This movement in writing focused on writing about how things really appeared and how they really were instead of writing in a dark manner. The stories, Life On The Mississippi and The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County written by Mark Twain best represent the realism movement in American literature at this time.

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

Ultimately, since Dunbar avoids specifically mentioning blacks and their suffering, with the history of this poem in mind, this poem could stand as a lament on behalf of all of the individuals who were forcefully made to wear a “mask” just as a girl who tries to hide her pregnancy from her parents, or as a boy who

It focused on social criticism and literature of the common place. Realism related to the lives of those living in the mis to late 1800s and early 1900s. The language of the writing was the way people spoke to each other included common phrases, words, or slang. Realism writers also say things how they are.

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.

Realism can be defined as view in which the author tries to depict life as truthfully and accurately as possible. The use of realistic or lifelike settings described by the author or narrated by a character, add a layer of realism to the story, even if the story itself is fictitious. The characters themselves are often portrayed as believable as possible, to the point that the character being described could actually exist; they are often depicted as very average people, void of extreme wealth, influence, or astounding abilities. The reason characters and settings are often

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

In verse two feelings of the necessary trudge/empowering iambic stride further unfolds. On the one hand Dunbar points to all the “tears and sighs” experienced by the collective “We”. But in the throws of this potential unempowered feelings, Dunbar seizes upon an element of control that can be taken.  “Why should the world be over-wise … nay let them only see us whilst we wear the mask”. In these words there is a boldness and resignation to not let the world have the privilege or even satisfaction perhaps, of seeing behind the mask into the suffering that is really going on.

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.

Dunbar opens his poem with “We wear the mask,” to draw in any type of

Hiding our faces from human guile “We Wear the Mask” is a poem written by Dunbar Paul Laurence the American poet and novelist. This poem is a very relatable and sad. The poem talks about the mask that people wear to hide their emotions and personality. It also talks about slavery and African Americans who wear masks to hide their fear, sadness, and pain. In this poem the slaves do not just wear a mask to hide their feelings, they smile and sing to appear perfect to society.

Realism was a huge movement in late 1800s to early 1900s. All art forms were influenced by it. Writers, artists, actors and more started taking a more simple direction and tried to depict life as it actually was. In visual art it was common to see ordinary people doing every day

Realism came about in literary works in the 19th century, and portrayed real life unlike the previous Enlightenment and Romanticism movements prior. Writers and people were sick of the neat, happy stories and endings that were written by the two previous movements, and those people wanted something they could relate to. Because of this, Realistic writers wrote about the boring, ordinary lives that regular folks led and did not sugar-coat anything that occurred but was brutally honest. In the words of Randall Craig, “Realistic writers educate readers, not through humiliation, but by familiarizing them with a re-presented world and enabling them to discover the rules by which it works and to apply them both to the fictional and extra-fictional