Similarities Between Eleanor Rigby And We Wear The Masks

In 1966 one of the greatest songwriters ever, Paul McCartney, wrote a song the would peak at number 11 on the Billboard Hot 100, and was ranked as one of the 150 greatest songs of all time by the Rolling Stones. This song was Eleanor Rigby. 71 years before this one of the greatest American poets, Paul Laurence Dunbar, wrote We Wear the Mask, a poem that would become an embodiment of life lived by many African Americans of the time. Even though 71 years separates these two bodies of work they both explore a common theme. Society sets normalities of how people should feel emotionally and when a person doesn’t feel this way they will do whatever they need to do to appear to fit the societal norm. Though, both works explore this basic theme, they differ in the ways they go about it, whether that be showing a similar theme or how they present the theme.

This woman picks up the rice after a wedding. She wants to be married. Society tells only a happy, picture perfect narrative of marriage. Eleanor Rigby might not exactly fit the narrative, for what a woman who has a picture perfect marriage is like. Seeing that positivity and happiness, Eleanor Rigby feels that to be able to get that in her own life she needs to married and fit the narrative that society tells. She isn’t the person she seems to be when people come to her door. She hides herself under a fake persona in order that she might find happiness. When Eleanor doesn’t feel they way that society tells her the majority of people supposedly feel she fakes it. She changes who she is so that she might fit the societal normality of