Paul Laurence Dunbar wrote “We Wear the Mask” in 1896, which was during a time of civil uneasiness in the United States. Considering the time period and the race of the author it would be easy to assume that this poem is strictly referring to the lives of African Americans during this time, but when looking deeper into the poem it is clear that Dunbar is addressing the entire human race. He uses the metaphor of the mask to represent the façade that so many people obtain in order to portray a happy and normal lifestyle. The narrator of the poem is Dunbar himself as he explains the mask worn not just by African Americans but by the entire human race. Before looking at the poem itself it is important to have some background information on the …show more content…
In the first line he says “We smile, O great Christ, our cries to thee from tortured souls arise.” Dunbar puts a claim on the two emotions by saying we smile and our cries, but he purposely did not claim Christ as only belonging to the black race, but instead called him great Christ, which I took as meaning He is over all people. By not claiming Christ as only belonging to his race he is again making it clear that he is referring to the entire human race when writing this poem. Next he writes “We sing, but oh the clay is vile beneath our feet and long the mile.” The word sing is used to describe an act of optimism and clay is representing the path of life. So this line is saying that though we may seem optimistic life is long and full of many hardships. Finally the last line brings the whole poem full circle saying “But let the world dream otherwise, We Wear the Mask!” This line brings light to the fact that regardless if the mask is believed to be good or bad it has become a natural way for us to live. It is accepted by our culture to put on the mask and to hide away our troubles. This causes the pain to remain hidden from others and therefore allows the world to dream of a better
Paul Laurence Dunbar is one of the most influential African American poets to gain a nationwide reputation. Dunbar the son of two former slaves; was born in 1872 in Dayton, Ohio. His work is truly one of a kind, known for its rich, colorful language, encompassed by the use of dialect, a conversational tune, and a brilliant rhetorical structure. The style of Dunbar’s poetry includes two distinct voices; the standard English of the classical poet and the evocative dialect of the turn of the century black community in America. His works include a large body of dialect poems, standard English poems, essays, novels, and short stories. The hardships encountered by members of is race along with the efforts of African Americans to achieve equality in America were often the focus of his writings. http://www.dunbarsite.org/
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.
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
It is Du Bois awareness of the veil that gives him the opportunity to step in and out it. He is not imprisoned and blinded by the veil, and writes not just to make black Americans aware of it, but also to give whites the opportunity to look at what they had created in erecting it, and how both races could play part in taking down the veil. The use of spirituals enforces the black Americans journey of striving for better in times of war, or the failed Reconstruction, and in the experience of living on the other side of the color-line, while trying push through it towards better times. The stories within the chapters are punctuated with beautiful and spiritual hymns, personal disclosures, facts, and psychological impacts that racism has imparted on the relationship between black and white Americans. The metaphor of the veil is impressive, and understood as a construct born of the color-line, which in turn created within the black American a double-consciousness. This condition would not allow them to see, or be themselves wholly, as the stereotypical images and beliefs of whites overshadowed them, made them invisible behind the veil. Du Bois real hope in constructing Souls of Black Folks was to give blacks a better understanding of their own nature and psychology as a result of others lack of regard for their blackness, while
One pattern that is easily identified is that of religiosity. The mission of this poem was to reminds the slaves that God would free them one day, just like he did the Israelites. However, in order for a slave to believe that, he or she needed to have a belief in something greater than his or her current situation. Yet, they could not be impatient with this belief and think that it was coming soon. In “An Ante-bellum Sermon,” Dunbar tells his audience “Don’t you git to brigity;/An’ don’t you git to braggin’/Bout dese things, you wait an’ see.” If a poem was spoken like this during slavery, it would be sure to prompt the slaves not take their freedom into their own hands. Therefore, throughout the poem Dunbar is consistently reminding them that they will have to suffer first in order to one day gain their humanity and freedom. With an understanding of these Black Arts patterns, the mission of the poem is
This poem is written from the perspective of an African-American from a foreign country, who has come to America for the promise of equality, only to find out that at this time equality for blacks does not exist. It is written for fellow black men, in an effort to make them understand that the American dream is not something to abandon hope in, but something to fight for. The struggle of putting up with the racist mistreatment is evident even in the first four lines:
“Be a man”, is on of the most destructive phrases to tell boys and men. The Mask You Live In explains the struggles boys and men have growing up in a patriarchal society. I chose to watch this to understand how men feel oppressed. All year, I became aware of females and their struggles in the patriarchy. It is interesting to see that men are affected too. The documentary should have had more personal stories because it allows the audience to connect with and have empathy for men. On the other hand, the movie thoroughly demonstrated the inner conflict boys and men face in society. Men feel they must be strong and dominate. They feel they need to hide emotion and empathy in order to fit in. They must be manly in order to
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 be otherwise” (13). The unreal character of the mask has played a significant role in the lives of African Americans, who pretend to put on a smile when they feel sad internally. This occasion, 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).
The poem also focuses on what life was like in the sixties. It tells of black freedom marches in the South how they effected one family. It told of how our peace officers reacted to marches with clubs, hoses, guns, and jail. They were fierce and wild and a black child would be no match for them. The mother refused to let her child march in the wild streets of Birmingham and sent her to the safest place that no harm would become of her daughter.
Du Bois' metaphor of double consciousness and his theory of the Veil are the most inclusive explanation of the ever-present plight of modern African Americans ever produced. In his nineteenth century work, The Souls of Black Folks, Du Bois describes double consciousness as a "peculiar sensation. . . the sense of always looking at one's self through the eyes of others, of measuring one's soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity" (Du Bois, 3). According to Du Bois assertions, the Black American exists in a consistent "twoness, - an American, a Negro"(3). Further, he theorizes, the African American lives shut behind a veil, viewing from within and without it. He is privy to white America's perspective of him, yet he cannot reveal his true self. He is, in fact, protected and harmed by The Veil.
The Concept of the veil has been a significant symbol of clearly differentiating from the whites, in aspects of political, economical and social prospects. Durkheim explained symbol as “something that stands for something else”(pg. 135). It is a symbol that calls up shared notions and values. In the example of the Blacks in the south, the veil symbolized an “iron curtain” separating the two races, separation and invisibility, of the black and white. The veil had previously been worn because of previous traditions demanding a clear separation of the sexes. The veil is seen as a social barrier to prevent the “others”, black African Americans, from surpassing into the clean and pure white world. Nonetheless Du bois also states, that its possible for one to, lift up the veil when one wishes, and he can also exist in a region on neither side, white nor black, which shows Du bois’ many different meaning and function with the symbol of the veil.
“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.
Laurence Dunbar's "Ship That Pass In The Night" is a cry for opportunity for all men, regardless of race. Dunbar's poem directly parallels a passage from Frederick Douglass' autobiography that gives an account of his life as a slave. Both Douglass and Dunbar look out at the ships that sail by and see hopes for societal changes. Although they both sought change, their aspirations were quite different. Frederick Douglass watched the ships from ashore, wishing for freedom and for slavery to be abolished. Paul Laurence Dunbar on the other hand was already a free man. He was on a ship, still more of an opportunity than Douglass had, yet he was still in search for new opportunities for African Americans. The new opportunities that he seeks are upon a ship somewhere sailing in the dark night and keep passing him by.