Racism In 'We Wear The Mask, By Natasha Trethenowe'

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Jonathan Price Proposal for Essay 3 10/7/13 What is your view about racists? Do you feel as if racism today has evolved to be better than what it was in the past? In the poems “We Wear the Mask” by Paul Laurence Dunbar and “White Lies” by Natasha Trethewey there is a racial barrier. I chose these two poems because to me they have more of a meaning behind them. The two poems show how things were historically but yet how things have remained the same yet today. With these two poems I will be comparing and contrasting them using literary devices. When comparing the poems I will be using literary devices, such as, assonance, metaphor, imagery and how both poems use lies. I will also be showing how literary devices contrast these two poems by using devices such as allusion, hyperbole, and personification. I will be using research questions such as: How have the girls in the poems changed to fit into society during their time? How do you feel the characters in both poems felt about their racial difference? How did diversity affect the characters? Where the characters in these poems trying to hide themselves because they felt if they did not they would have no respect in public? When comparing the poems “We Wear the Mask” by Paul Laurence Dunbar and Natasha Trethewey’s poem “White Lies” I think one has to start with the writers themselves. Dunbar was born to a mother who was a former slave and his father had escaped slavery and served in the 55th Massachusetts Infantry Regiment and the 5th Massachusetts Colored Regiment during the Civil War. Ms. Trethewey frequently likes to utilize the American Civil War in her literary works. They both appear to have a love for those who are racially different as indicated in the ... ... middle of paper ... ...rent kinds of people. I have showed you how things were historically compared to the twenty first century. I showed you how Paul Laurence Dunbar’s “We Wear The Mask” and “White Lies” by Natasha Trethewey’s poems compare and contrast using the literary devices. The literary devices that I used to compare them were assonance, metaphor, imagery and how both poems use lies. Than when contrasting these poems I used the literary devices allusion, hyperbole, and personification. The questions that I answered for you in this paper were; how have the girls in the poems changed to fit into society during their time? How do you feel the characters in both poems felt about their racial difference? How did diversity affect the characters? Where the characters in these poems trying to hide themselves because they felt if they did not they would have no respect in public?

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