ipl-logo

Paul Laurence Dunbar Analysis

596 Words3 Pages

Maya Angelou and Paul Laurence Dunbar were two remarkable poets. Maya Angelou was born in Marguerite Johnson in St Louis, Missouri, on April 4, 1928. Writer and civil rights activist Maya Angelou is known for her 1969 memoir, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, which made literary history as the first nonfiction best-seller of an African-American woman. After experiencing health issues for a number of years, Maya Angelou died on May 28, 2014, at her home in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. Paul Laurence Dunbar was born on June 27, 1872. He was one of the first African-American poets to gain national recognition. He was the only African American in his high school class and he became class president and class poet. He died in Dayton, Ohio, on February 9, 1906, at the age of thirty-three. Both poems I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou and We Wear The Mask by Paul Laurence Dunbar express the oppression and lack of freedom in their society. Both of the poets uses literary devices such as imagery, metaphor and symbolism.

I know why the caged bird sings, the speaker uses imagery to visualize the things that are happening through the poem. One example is “ Dips his wings in the orange rays and dares to claim the sky (line 4-5).” As you read this quote from the poem, you can imagine the beauty of the sky the orange rays …show more content…

“His wings are clipped and his feet are tied So he opens his throat to sing (line 8-14)”. While the free bird enjoys his freedom, the caged bird is so sad because he is caged and he started to sing. In we wear the mask, the speaker uses metaphor, thought the poem to point out how we express ourselves with people and with a mask on. One example is “We wear the mask that grins and lies”( line 1). This line shows how people use the mask to show grins. The mask means that people hide what they really are with fake smiles and

Show More
Related

Summary Of Richard Wilbur's A Barred Owl

342 Words | 2 Pages

Do you ever remember being scared of monsters under the bed? If so, then you will relate to the young child in “A Barred Owl.” An owl hooting in the night scares a girl, but thankfully her parents are there to comfort her. In “A Barred Owl,” author Richard Wilbur uses imagery, tone, and personification to show how powerful words can subdue any emotion. Imagery plays an important role in relaying the message of the poem.

Read More

The War The Mask: Comparing The Song And Song

386 Words | 2 Pages

So the mask is the main part of each of the text the poem and the song. The mask consists with the hidden of the individual's identities. In the song states “ kids doing the boogie Woogie wear the mask”, and “My crew in the jersey wear the mask”. In the poem, it states ‘We wear the mask that grins and lies…” meaning these individuals are living a false

Read More

Judgement In The Minister's Black Veil

770 Words | 4 Pages

Judgement causes people to wear masks. In The Minister’s Black Veil by Nathaniel Hawthorne, people in the community judge Mr. Hooper for wearing a veil. Since he lives in a Puritan community everyone knew everything about each other, and if anyone misbehaved everyone would know about it. Hawthorne makes this evident in the first paragraph when he describes the way the town reacted when he wore the veil to a funeral sermon. In his sermon Hooper states that God is always watching, but the truth is that the townspeople are always watching and judging their peers. ”

Read More

Analysis Of 'The Colored Soldiers' By Paul Dunbar

642 Words | 3 Pages

After the abolishment of slavery, the American Civil War broke out, which Paul Dunbar wrote about to model the fight for equality for African Americans. Dunbar utilized a key individual to write by the name of Robert Gould Shaw, an American soldier in the Union Army during the Civil War. He served as the commander of the first-all black regiment, 54th Massachusetts, where he encouraged blacks to refuse pay until the standards for all had reached. The meaning of war for African Americans exhibited a “hot tear of a hopeless fight” (“Robert Gould Shaw” 11) as a result of battle much larger than the war implied. Instead, it implied a disturbance in ignoring color barriers, but rather noticing a person for who he or she actually embodied.

Read More

African American Culture In Langston Hughes And We Wear The Mask

802 Words | 4 Pages

Such personification mirrors Dunbar’s use of figurative language, which relates the poems in more ways than one. Dunbar touches on human features such as cheeks and eyes in his poem but also uses a spiritual element to advance his point of view. Furthermore, “We Wear the Mask” was written in 1896; a period in American history that was post-slavery but still had widespread discrimination. The spiritual connotation within Dunbar’s poem can allude to African American churches and/or the hymns slaves sung on plantations. Nevertheless, the struggle of African Americans is a symbol of both presented

Read More

Masks in 'We Wear the Mask' and 'To Kill a Mockingbird'

1218 Words | 5 Pages

People act differently when they are with certain people than when they are alone. Some will call this act a “mask.” This metaphor is used because people cover up who they truly are or what they really feel with their actions; similar to the way a mask covers up a person’s face. This idea of a mask is explored in Paul Laurence Dunbar’s poem, “We Wear the Mask” and readers can see examples of “masks” in Harper Lee’s novel, To Kill a Mockingbird. People often wear masks to hide something about themselves that they are not proud of or hide their emotions and fears they do not want others to know.

Read More

The Race Questions By Paul Laurence Dunbar Rhetorical Analysis Essay

479 Words | 2 Pages

The white people seem to brush off the ruins of the Civil War while the African Americans were left with broken promises and discrimination after the war. Many African Americans were under the impression that they would prove their worth and somehow crawl out of discrimination by fighting in the war. However, they were still under the cloud of prejudice and stereotype after risking their lives. Paul Laurence Dunbar is a poet that was often recognized for his criticism about the discrimination that the African Americans faced. One of his famous pieces, The Race Questions Discussed (1898), contained his opinions about the treatment they were receiving.

Read More

Examples Of Confirmation Bias In Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man

694 Words | 3 Pages

He used this motif of wearing a mask a great deal in his novel, and it leads us to believe that, everyone wears a mask, even society. The idea shown in this poem is also shown through the narrator’s introduction into the novel. For example, in the prologue, Ellison wrote, “I am an invisible man…I am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see me” (3). This shows how the narrator represents the norms of society in that people are forced into wearing masks in order to even be seen in other people’s eyes. The narrator begins, in literal terms, as one of those people who haven’t realized that being themselves is just not enough.

Read More

Social Construction Of Gender In 'The Mask You Live In'

2083 Words | 9 Pages

The mask is the hard shell that young men are expected to face the world with. They are expected to show only their best selves and hide their insecurities and worries. The mask is incredibly relatable to the social construction of gender, because it was created through the social construction of gender. Young males would not need to create a mask and live behind it if society didn 't force them too.

Read More

Why People Wear Mask Analysis

1000 Words | 4 Pages

The oldest found mask is from 7000 BC, and experts believe it was used for rituals and ceremonies. Masks have an important cultural context in history, and as the use of masks has progressed, humans have adopted masks into other forms of entertainment and festivities. In present times, with better understanding of human psychology, society has come to understand that people wear emotional “masks” as well. Masks have a somewhat important context in both Golding’s Lord of the Flies and Dunbar’s “We Wear the Mask”. Both works describe masks as a way to hide one’s true self from everyone; Dunbar, however, depicts masks as an emotional barrier to cover up one’s true emotions or feelings, while Golding uses masks as a physical object to hide behind.

Read More

Masking And Signification In Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man

914 Words | 4 Pages

Masks hide the truth and obscure the facts. They form a barrier between what is real and what is an illusion. Yet, during from the moment blacks were brought to this continent in chains, to the moment they were granted civil rights in the 1960’s, masks were a method of survival. Another way of life for African Americans was the practice of signifying. Signifying is mostly seen in the black literary tradition as a means for African Americans to take back power from the white through misinformation and deception.

Read More

Why Is Maya Angelou Important

514 Words | 3 Pages

Maya Angelou was a strong African-American women who made an influential impact on the Civil Rights Movement, in bother her actions, and her literature. Her life experiences and courage helped others, and made her work influential. During Maya’s early life, she experienced many hardships that shaped her into the person many remember her as. Born on April 4, 1928, she only lived in St. Louis, MO for three years before her parents got divorced, and Maya, along with her mother and brother, moved in with her grandparents in Arkansas. At the age of eight, raped by her mother’s boyfriend, Maya learned the power that words possess.

Read More

Compare And Contrast Angelou And Paul Laurence Dunbar

535 Words | 3 Pages

His poem Sympathy is just one example of how he felt trapped like a caged bird in his life. Even though the Civil War was over, African Americans still did not have as many privileges and opportunities as most White people had. Most of Dunbar’s writing showed his perspective of life and the struggles that came with it. Maya Angelou was born in 1928 and suffered a hard childhood that later on affected her writing. When she was eight years old, Maya was sexually abused and raped by her mother’s boyfriend.

Read More

African-Americans Wear The Mask By Paul Laurence Dunbar

915 Words | 4 Pages

The conclusion drawn in these lines – that it’s better and safer to wear the mask and continue to fool the world – is ironic because the purpose of poem is to remove the “mask” and expose the truth. This brings the reader into the poem; only the reader, along with the speaker, know about the mask and why it’s used. This shared secret bonds the reader and the speaker, allowing for a powerful opportunity to experience life through the

Read More

Faces By Sara Teasdale

323 Words | 2 Pages

The main theme of the poem is centered on the masks that we wear in society, but the poem digs deeper than the simple statement, ‘we all wear masks’. Teasdale presents the insight that when we are walking on the sidewalk, surrounded by the chaos of the streets, we delve into our own thoughts and the mask lifts. Because we are among strangers rather than coworkers, family, or peers, we do

Read More

More about Paul Laurence Dunbar Analysis

Related Topics

Open Document