Essay On We Wear The Mask

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Dunbar was believed to be the first black American to earn national recognition for his writing. Dunbar was the son of freed slaves his father escaped slavery and served in the union army during the civil war. . In Antebellum and Post Civil War America, African Americans utilized what little authority they had through the power of the mask. In a world where the white-man held political power, money, and land, blacks used what they had, their wit, to survive. Terrified of being perceived as disobedient and then sold down the river, slaves acted differently around whites than they would around their own people .The writings of Harris, Dunbar, Chestnut, and Twain illustrate how African Americans used the only refuge they had, their mind, to combat the dominating authority of white society, and how in the process, they created “the mask” to not only survive but to exert their power their mind was their ultimate source of power. Dunbar was a different type …show more content…

The Uncle Remus stereotype is a version of the mask Paul Dunbar writes of in his poem, “We Wear the Mask.” In the first stanza of the poem, the speaker describes the very nature of a mask. It hides our true face and replaces it with deceitful a smile: “We wear the mask that grins and lies, / It hides our cheeks and shades our eyes,” (Dunbar 1-2). It “shades our eyes” to prevent others from looking in and seeing the true self. Then in the second stanza the speaker does not wish for the world to be “over-wise” in knowing all his struggles, “tears and sighs,” and so he comes to the realization that the world should “only see us, while/ we wear the mask” (6-9). In the concluding stanza, the speaker admits to revealing his true pain to the lord—“We smile, but, O great Christ, our cries / to thee from tortured souls arise”

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