Wait a second!
More handpicked essays just for you.
More handpicked essays just for you.
the concept of happiness conclusion
What is happiness? essay
how do we define happiness
Don’t take our word for it - see why 10 million students trust us with their essay needs.
Recommended: the concept of happiness conclusion
Most would agree that putting a smile on the face will almost allow a feeling of joy to start from within. Furthermore, what is known is that every coin has two sides and within that dark side, the smile has many different facets. The thought and discipline in civil resistance on others that look upon some as inferior is a sign of a goodly man. In “We Wear the Mask” by Paul Laurence Dunbar one facet it shows is his oppression in the world and vagueness one must reflect; through his poem, it shows the revolting world he lives in and the smile of obscurity to conceal himself from the evils in the world.
In the beginning stanza, it’s all about concealment and deception that is hiding from a treacherous possible outcome. The author writes, “We wear the mask that grins and lies / It hides our cheeks and shades our eyes / This debt we pay to human guile” (Dunbar 1-3). In the first line, it implies a group that is hiding its true feelings from others by saying we. It is the face of deceitful refusal to accept the wrongs as rights to the oppressors around them. The second line it explain...
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.
“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.
Dunbar, Paul Laurence. “We Wear the Mask.” The Norton Anthology of American Literature. Nina Baym. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., 2007. Print
In Self-Reliance, Ralph Waldo Emerson condemns false appearances. Paul Laurence Dunbar's We Wear the Mask also supports this belief. However, there is a difference in the views of these two works. Emerson believes that people can shed their false social appearances and live a life true to themselves and others. Conversely, Dunbar thinks these pretenses are necessary. The authors' word choices and images support this argument.
In the time of the Great Depression, many people were in moments of suffering and hardships. However, African American were facing moments of prejudice and segregation, that was sonly based on the color of their skin. In the novel, “To Kill a Mockingbird” by Harper lee and the poem “We wear the mask” by Paul Lawrence Dumber, gave incite to those moments and how African Americans changed themselves to fit in to the white people society.
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.
Here he has used the word “we” representing his race and “theirs” as representing the whites. Furthermore he uses the words like “dirt”, “thorn”, ”shadows” to convey the darkness surrounding them. Poet states in the
Nothing can cause as much suffering and pain then man to man can. Racisms, violence, hatred, cruelty, and brutal behaviours are all traces of inhumanity. Both works of literature “Strange Fruit” by Lewis Allan and “We Wear the Mask” by Paul Laurence Dunbar portray inhumanity through the imagery of tortured souls, symbols of physical pain, and the symbolic imagery within their titles.
Throughout life, people put on a mask to hide their true selves from everyone around them. It’s always an appearance versus reality type of thing. Someone could pull themselves together quite well but in reality, they are worse. That is a common argument presented by F. Scott Fitzgerald in “The Great Gatsby” and Paul Laurence Dunbar in the poem “We Wear the Mask.”
In the first line, he writes, “Out of the night that covers me.” “Night” evokes images of the darkness and emptiness that has taken over the speaker’s life. Henley then objectifies the speaker’s suffering, by comparing it to a vast, empty “pit.” In the second stanza, Henley uses analogy to continue the description of the speaker’s suffering, by attributing animalistic qualities to the abstract concept of “circumstance.” He compares the relation between “circumstance” and the speaker to the relation between a predator and its prey. Line 6, “In the fell clutch of circumstance,” instills the image of the grip of a predator on its prey. The speaker is being held in the tight grip of a tragic circumstance, and is extremely close to death. Though cursed with a great burden, the speaker does not “wince nor cry aloud,” that is, complain vociferously about his pain,
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).
When looking into the first stanza, we can see that the speaker is trying to show the importance of the reader’s reactions it times of despair. He is showing us that we must take responsibility for our own actions, and that we cannot let the ones around us, who seem to be ill with lies and deceit, infect our good-natured being. “If you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs and blaming it on you…” (Line 1) is an example of...
The poem begins with the refrain, "Ah, look at all the lonely people." The same refrain is used to end the poem, making a complete circle. This creates, for the reader, a sense of loneliness about the poem as a whole. In the second stanza, Eleanor is introduced as a woman who cannot face the world as her self. She wears the “face that she keeps in a jar by the door.'; Literally this can be interpreted as makeup, but symbolically she is hiding her self.
"We Wear the Mask" by Paul Dunbar was published in the late 1800’s, a time when African-Americans, like Paul Dunbar, were treated very poorly and had access to very few rights. Many changes were occurring during this time, and individuals were having a difficult time coming to terms with them. African Americans in particular found themselves caught in a culture that was not suitable for them. Dunbar expresses these feelings in the tone, which is shown by misery, anger and unhappiness. He uses the metaphor of wearing a mask to express the overall oppression of African Americans in this time period. Dunbar uses a lot of figurative language throughout this poem. He uses the word "we" to speak for the entire African American population as well as his self. He does this because he is painfully aware of the status his own race is living in. Throughout this poem, Paul Dunbar illustrates the horrific injustices they had to undergo while "wearing the mask" to hide their true emotions behind a smile. I have chosen a few lines in the poem “We Wear the Mask” to break down and show what each line really means through this figurative language Dunbar uses. I chose to examine lines 1 through 11, and 14 and 15.
The working class can work to create the ‘bread’ but at the end of the day they have no right to it, it goes to the upper classes. By including the reader within the poem using ‘We’ there is more of a unity and solidarity within the text. Its like the reader is part of the march. The poem is written in a song structure so it is easily sung or chanted within a march or a meeting of the