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Essays on maya angelou's poetry
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The poetical works of both Maya Angelou and Paul Lawrence Dunbar, "The Mask" and "We Wear the Mask", respectively, both convey agreeing and disagreeing views of personal identity through their voices of emotion. Both speakers mention the necessity of hiding their true identity. Dunbar speaks more to the unity of the mask, hiding a group, whereas Angelou speaks more to her own personal struggle. Both speakers mention outward expression in the face of adversity. Angelou speaks of laughter, whereas Dunbar speaks of smiling. Both speakers cry inwardly when they are suffering. Angelou and Dunbar speak of hiding their true identities in the face of the world and it's adversity. Both authors speak to a communal mask that all men and women wear. Angelou and Dunbar suffer in their lives, so they must wear a mask to hide themselves from the glaring public eye, for the public cannot help them. The mask forms their identity to the world, but they themselves have a personal identity that only those truly close to them know of. In a wider sense, everyone wears a mask; hiding themselves from everyone else. …show more content…
Angelou’s inclusion of onomatopoeia, or her laughter, gives the audience a sense of false hope that she is fine. Throughout “The Mask”, Angelou ironically uses laughter to counteract her own suffering. She speaks to the duplicity of her own emotions, for she cries whenever she thinks about herself and her relatives. Dunbar speaks of smiling outwardly, but crying out to Christ internally. Both speakers talk of the world only seeing them when they are wearing the mask, because the world is too critical at times; the speakers would be
Humans are capable of many expressions of emotion, but holding this ability also allows for many people to hide what they are truly feeling within their own minds. Those who shield their emotions from others around them frequently do so in order to protect either themselves or their loved ones from the pains that may occur in life, both in a society and in a family. In Pamela Painter’s Toasters, Jose Padua’s poem Barbie, Utahna Faith’s short story All Girl Band, and George the Poet’s One Number, the recurring theme of outward appearances not reflecting the mindset of the speakers is illustrated.
Many writers begin writing and showing literary talent when they are young. Paul Laurence Dunbar, born and raised in Dayton, Ohio, was already editor of a newspaper and had had two of his poems published in the local newspaper before he’d graduated from high school. His classmate, Orville Wright, printed The Tattler which Dunbar edited and published for the local African American community. After graduating from high school, he was forced to get a job as an elevator operator which allowed him spare time for writing. He finally gained recognition outside of Dayton when, in 1892, he was invited to address the Western Association of Writers and met James Newton Matthews who praised his work in a letter to an Illinois newspaper. In 1892, he decided to publish his first book of poems entitled Oak and Ivy and four years later his second book of poems Majors and Minors was published. People began to see him as a symbol for his race, and he was thought of artistically as “a happy-go-lucky, singing, shuffling, banjo-picking being… in a log cabin amid fields of cotton” (Dunbar, AAW 2). Dunbar’s poems, written alternately in literary and dialect English, are about love, death, music, laughter, human frailty, and though Dunbar tried to mute themes of social protest, social commentary on racial themes is present in his poetry.
The inconsistent American view of integrity exposed in “We Wear the Mask” Paul Laurence Dunbar and “Theme for English B” Langston Hughes acknowledges the struggle between how society views African Americans and how the community views itself. Circumstances were difficult in America amongst the end of the 19th and beginning of 20th century. An immense amount of changes were happening, and numerous people had a troublesome time dealing with them. African Americans specifically got in a culture that showed up to more superior to anything it had been before and surrounded by the Civil War. The truth was, things simply weren 't so divine. African-American of this time period are prime cases
The poem, "We Wear the Mask”, by Paul Laurence Dunbar is about separating Blacks people from the masks they wear. When Blacks wear their masks they are not simply hiding from their oppressor they are also hiding from themselves. This type of deceit cannot be repaid with material things. This debt can only be repaid through repentance and self-realization. The second stanza of “We Wear the Mask” tells Blacks whites should not know about their troubles. It would only give them leverage over Blacks. Black peoples’ pain and insecurities ought to be kept amongst themselves. There is no need for anyone outside the black race to know what lies beneath their masks. The third stanza turns to a divine being. Blacks look to god because he made them and is the only one that can understand them. They must wear their mask proudly. The world should stay in the dark about who they are. This poem is about Blacks knowing their place and staying in it. This is the only way they could be safe.
By embracing his invisibility as his identity, the narrator comes to the realization that what he has gone through, the cycle of becoming a new being, may speak to others as members of oppressed communities work to find a voice. With the rhetorical questioning, the narrator goes through continuous self-criticism, but by critiquing himself, he is able to realize that he needs to bring a change with the way his invisibility is used. Through the adventures of being unknown in the picture to utilizing whatever possible to create change, the narrator portrays the true impact invisibility can produce, which is that invisibility can be the identity that one acclaims to, it does not have to be viewed in a negative light. If one does not attach themselves with labels or different descriptions, that does not mean that they are incompetent in any manner, but rather, they choose to be invisible and a part of something greater. With rhetorical questioning and accepting the boon of invisibility, the narrator finds a way to truly free himself from any shackles that may have limited him earlier as he worked to find his identity and understand who he really
Dunbar, Paul Laurence. “We Wear the Mask.” The Norton Anthology of American Literature. Nina Baym. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., 2007. Print
She did not complain about her childhood, racism, divorce, losing her friends, or rejection. She has overcome all the obstacles with courage; that is another lesson we can learn. In her poem, she says, “You may shoot me with your words, you may cut me with your eyes, you may kill me with your hatefulness, but still, like air, I’ll rise!” Angelou knew who she was. She learned not to live according to people’s opinions.
For fear of judgment based on appearance, any human being might cover up his sorrows as to not display any signs of weakness. Throughout Dunbar’s poem, the characters reflect upon their perception of the world and ironically accept the world the way it is. Revealing the true nature of the world, Dunbar states, “Why should the world be over-wise, /In counting all our tears and sighs?” (Dunbar 6). The poet insists that everyone need to be more comfortable and open to new ideas while embracing each others uniquenesses defined by strengths and weaknesses. The world was never “over-wise” because people dismiss the idea of helping others in fear of ruining their own reputation. Because of the utter nature of society, citizens have no other option but to wear a mask of apathy and cover up their insecurities. The narrator feels the need to conceal their feelings by “wear[ing] the mask that grins and lies” (Dunbar 1). They use “lies” to cover themselves, but at the same time question why no one seems to care. This contradiction complicates the battle between the world and the individual. Nevertheless, by changing their identities, they spread the idea of disguise, making everyone blind to the truth of human
Stein and Pablo Picasso, her friend and contemporary, both used masking as an aesthetic means by which to alter the nature of an initial subject. Inspired by African masks, Picasso painted a mask on a portrait of Stein, while Stein rewrote her own story, first captured in Q.E.D., into the black characters of the central tale in Three Lives. In doing so, North argues, Stein both invited her white readers to live in to her characters, and allowed herself to see both race and gender as a “role,” not as a biologically predetermined attribute. At the same time, the literary and linguistic mask establishes itself as representative of freedom from European “convention” and as an example of nature and freedom, but also as a construction, a cultural convention and restriction fin and of itself. The usage of the mask, for North, represents the breaking down of the dichotomy between “impersonality and individuality, [and] conventional representation and likeness.”
This poem is Maya Angelou speaking to the audience as she explains the problems she has overcome such as; racism, sexism, bullying and other problems in her life that she has managed to move on from.This poem is set in a first person narrative, Angelou explains to the audience about the good and bad times within her life, presented in a graceful way. By the poem being set in first person narrative, this allows the audience to connect to the poet on a deeper level because the tone of the poem is more intense throughout, making it more real for the audience. This genre of poetry is lyric poetry, relating to Angelou’s feelings and thoughts throughout the poem, addressing the audience directly.
“ We wear the mask that grins and lies, / it hides our cheeks and shades our eyes” (1-2) In these lines it clear he is saying they hide behind a mask that is made of fake smiles. The mask also hides how they feel, Dunbar uses figurative language to explain this. The mask hides their cheeks and their eyes, preventing them from seeing, and others from seeing them.Your cheeks
Paul Laurence Dunbar’s “We Wear the Mask” is a lyric poem in which the point of attraction, the mask, represents the oppression and sadness held by African Americans in the late 19th century, around the time of slavery. As the poem progresses, Dunbar reveals the façade of the mask, portrayed in the third stanza where the speaker states, “But let the dream otherwise” (13). The unreal character of the mask has played a significant role over the life of African Americans, whom pretend to put on a smile when they feel sad internally. This ocassion, according to Dunbar, is the “debt we pay to human guile," meaning that their sadness is related to them deceiving others. Unlike his other poems, with its prevalent use of black dialect, Dunbar’s “We Wear the Mask” acts as “an apologia (or justification) for the minstrel quality of some of his dialect poems” (Desmet, Hart and Miller 466). Through the utilization of iambic tetrameter, end rhyme, sound devices and figurative language, the speaker expresses the hidden pain and suffering African Americans possessed, as they were “tortured souls” behind their masks (10).
“We Wear the Mask” by Paul Laurence Dunbar and “Richard Cory” by Edwin Arlington Robinson are two poems that depict how many people hide their feelings from others by masking what is within with false appearances. Told from different perspectives, the subjects in the poems deceive others by leading them to believe their lives are adequate when really they are suffering.
Ralph Ellison lucratively establishes his point through the pathos and ethos of his fictional character, the invisible man. He persuades his readers to reflect on how they receive their identities. Ellison shows us the consequences of being “invisible.” He calls us to make something of ourselves and cease our isolationism. One comes to the realization that not all individuals will comply with society, but all individuals hold the potential to rise above expectations.
“We Wear the Mask” by Paul Laurence Dunbar and “Richard Cory” by Edwin Arlington Robinson are two poems that depict how many people hide their feelings from others. The two poems are similar in theme, but are told from different points of view and differ in plot.