Paul Laurence Dunbar We Wear The Mask Essay

Sonny takes the narrator to a bar where he and his band will be playing. The narrator is taken to a table in the corner to listen to the music. The band begins to play and the narrator observes that Creole, the bass fiddler, is telling the audience what the blues were really about. “For, while the tale of how we suffer, and how we are delighted, and how we may triumph is never new, it always must be heard. There isn’t any other tale to tell, it’s the only light we’ve got in all this darkness,” (46). In other words, every single person suffers in their own way. People must find new ways to express their suffering. The light illuminates the darkness and makes it less terrifying, helping ease the reality of racism. Sonny takes the narrator to a bar where he and his band will be playing. The narrator is guided to a table in the corner where he will observe the performance and hear Sonny play. While sitting at the table, the narrator notices that the band was behaving as “if they moved into the light too suddenly, without thinking, they would perish in flame,” (44). The light represents the suffering that is racism, and the darkness that the band is standing in represents a type of safe zone from the racism. The band is scared to step into the light because that means they are open and vulnerable to scrutiny and racism, and it might be too much for them, causing the band to

Paul Laurence Dunbar was born in a northern town near Dayton, Ohio on June 27, 1872 (Brawley 12). His parents instilled in him the value of an education, and he excelled at the all-white Dayton Central High-school where he held the titles of class president, the president of the school literary society, and the editor of the school's newspaper (15). Dunbar was extremely well learned; he spoke and wrote in Standard English, but just as often his poetry was written in black dialect. As one of the first professional African American literary figures (Baym 1038), Paul Laurence Dunbar's poetry consists of two distinct styles: his dialect pieces with the simple rhyme schemes of the ballad lyrical form, such as his 1897 poem When Malindy

Paul Laurence Dunbar, in “We Wear The Mask”, talks about the “mask” he and others are forced to wear to provide an illusion of happiness, and cover up their real emotions from the rest of the world. Dunbar asks the rhetorical question of why the world should know their true emotions and be “over-wise” in counting their tears and sighs. He answers his own question by saying that they should only let them see them with their masks on. He concludes, by calling onto a higher power, exclaiming that the higher power is the only one that knows their true emotions, but he wants the rest of the world to believe otherwise. Both these poems, although different in situations, address the issues of social ignorance and standards by using metaphorical symbols and wording.

To begin, in the poem there is a lot of use of imagery, as the speaker wants the readers to see the same things as him rather than told. Komunyakaa is visiting the Vietnam Veteran’s Memorial, where the names are engraved of those soldiers that have passed away, or were never found as they have been missing during the Vietnam War. The granite where the names are on is black. Komunyakaa himself, is an African American so he see’s that his face is disappearing, “My black face fades,/ hiding inside the black granite” (1-2). He is experiencing a loss of identity, for the fact that there is no contrast between his face and the black granite because he see’s that he blends in. Another image is that Yusef Komunyakaa had in mind that he will not cry or be emotional as he is acknowledging the black granite, but he ends up crying “I said I wouldn’t,/ dammit: No tears” (3-4). He saw himself as a strong person, but ends up crying as he see’s his own

veil to shield the emotions of bearer of the mask and personal denial of specific

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.

The poems “We Wear the Mask” and “Sympathy” by Paul Dunbar both symbolize oppressed black Americans and tell of the suffering that they endured. In his poem Dunbar uses dramatic, descriptive and symbolic language to portray images in his poetry of the pointless prejudices and racism that African Americans faced in America during the Harlem Renaissance. In the poem “We Wear the Mask, the mask wearers did not want the world to focus on what was really happening. They wanted to take the spotlight off of the pain and struggle and redirect it towards the hope and strength that the individuals had within. Just because they were not allowed equal rights and liberties, they refused to let that dictate their joy, happiness and peace.

When reading the required chapters from Literature: An Introduction to Fiction, Poetry, Drama, and Writing, the poems “We Wear the Mask” by Paul Laurence Dunbar and “Redemption” by George Herbert grasped my attention. Both poems present their ideas effectively with the use of closed form and symbolism, however, they do so with many other differences in technique. Although they each possess terrific assets, “Redemption” captivates the natural desire of humanity to pursue God and also reveals the Lord’s redeeming love with its closed form and symbolism greater than “We Wear the Mask” demonstrates how people hide their true feelings.

An Analysis of “We Wear the Mask” In a world where pain is mocked, and genuine kindness is ridiculed, members of our society have grown to feel that it is necessary to hide, and create false images to protect our inner selves. Paul Laurence Dunbar’s poem, “We Wear the Mask”, uses strategic iambic tetrameter as well as symbolism to emphasis and display the natural man’s tendencies to hide behind metaphorical masks. In his poem, Dunbar uses imagery that allows the reader to visualize the person hiding behind the mask.

We get a feeling that the fact of the matter is a fairly painful one, so individuals wear "masks" to shroud the repulsive truth. After the Civil War, numerous African Americans were left still abused by alternate races regardless of the thirteenth amendment being passed. With this, they're caught alone with just their thoughts and minds. Dunbar's title "We Wear The Mask" is a metaphor in itself since individuals wear “masks” to conceal their actual personality, so these individuals were concealing their actual considerations and sentiments behind a metaphorical "mask". In one of the lines of the poem, Dunbar expresses “We smile

In society, people are constantly worried about “fitting in” and fear being themselves will hinder their ability to conform to society. Many people fear that being themselves will have a detrimental effect on their social life, and others feel that they are outcasts and that they need to be someone they’re not in order to be socially accepted. People often try to hide their true personality, and wear a “mask.” To metaphorically wear a mask is to express yourself the way you want to be seen, rather than how you actually feel. This instills the idea that one’s own personality is not good enough, creating a fear of being yourself, causing people to wear a “mask.” People wear these masks in an attempt to navigate in society, to preserve innocence,

We Wear the Mask 1. The mask symbolizes one hiding emotions or in other words, lying in a way. The mask is used to say that while the people felt one thing, they showed another. 2.

Hyperbole and metaphors used in the poem links to how everyone wears a mask once in the while and has the same universal feeling of hopelessness. Dunbar goes on to note that the more you ignore something, it lays dormant and may come back even bigger. In “ We Wear the Mask,” Dunbar exaggerates how changing can be beneficial and harmful because it can be concluded that all the illusions and subdued emotions are just phony disguises of the painful truths that hide behind them. Thus, people would want to disguise their pain because it makes them vulnerable. vulnerability is often concealed and causes one to instinctively want to protect themselves from the ridicule of the public.

So many have come to dwell behind a panarchy mask. Lost between the delusive dimensions of identity. (Walters) The opening of this poem creates an illusive, almost magical sensation in the reader, the vocabulary used such as dwell, delusive dimensions and panarchy mask all position the reader to be transported to an almost surreal world as the words flow one by on into each other. The tone of the piece grows dark as the poet directs her words

For example, “with torn and bleeding hearts we smile, and mouth with myriad subtleties” to that sentence a lot of people may be able to relate to this. Realism comes in within this sentence because it’s truth even though we are broken, torn, upset, feeling miserable we still manage to find a way to hide it within giving a slight broken smile. “We smile, but, O great Christ, our cries To thee from tortured souls arise” this sentence has a lot of meaning behind it, because like I previously said other people may not know how we feel but Christ is the One who knows how we really feel. “Let the world dream otherwise, we wear the mask!” Don’t let them see how you actually feel, just hide it within a mask so no one would know how you feel”. Dunbar really hit the jackpot with this poem because it speaks nothing but real