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Similarities Between We Wear The Mask And Richard Cory

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Literary devices used in poetry can effectively convey the themes and messages that the poets aim to express. Both “Richard Cory” by Edwin Arlington Robinson and “We Wear the Mask” by Paul Laurence Dunbar explore the theme of appearances versus reality and masking true emotions and feelings. In society, there is a common expectation to put on a happy face and portray a perfect identity. The poets used their poems to express a message in which concealing oneself is not always shown easily and no one can know what someone else is feeling behind their mask. In the poems “We Wear the Mask” and “Richard Cory,” the authors used irony, imagery, and duality to reveal the theme of hiding true emotions. The use of irony is heavily used in both poems. In “Richard Cory,” the main character, Richard, appears to have everything in life. He seems as though his life is perfect and nothing could go wrong. He was envied by the whole town and was respected. In the last 3 lines of the poem, it is revealed that Richard had taken his life. “And Richard Cory, one calm summer night,/ Went home and put a bullet through his head” (Robinson, …show more content…

Duality is an instance of opposition or contrast between two concepts or aspects of something, being dual. Richard, in “Richard Cory,” is viewed as a wealthy and successful man, yet he ultimately takes his own life. This revealed a hidden duality in him. Robinson uses duality to highlight the contrast between the public image of cory as a successful man and a content individual with his own sense of loneliness and despair. In “We Wear the Mask,” the author discusses the way people put on a mask of happiness and contentment in public, even when the people are truly not happy. The mask represents the facade that people must put on to conform to society’s expectations and hide their true feelings. By using duality, Dunbar highlights the complex nature of humans to conceal

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Some people in high school are pretending to be at a big masquerade party. They wear masks pretending to be someone different from who they really are, and convince the people around them to see there mask as their true self. Many of the teenagers in the book Bronx Masquerade by Nikki Grimes wore masks to hide who they really were. The students revealed their true identities and how they felt by writing and performing poetry on Open Mike Fridays in their English class. The main character, Tyrone Bittings, is a judgmental, confident, observant teen that reveals who he truly is through learning and listening to poetry.

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178 Words | 1 Pages

Shakespeare once said “All the world’s stage and all women and men merely players” and throughout the tough times, we’ve learned to mask ourselves according to different characters in order to gain society’s approval that we solely forget to seek acceptance from ourselves. In the short story, “Everyone Talked Loudly in Chinatown” by Anne Jew, Lin puts on different masks as she interacts with her family and in school to live up to their expectations. While in the short story “The Kid Nobody Could Handle” by Kurt Vonnegut, Jim had accepted society’s view that he had forgotten about how he views himself, unlike Gene from “I Go Along” by Richard Peck, who had forcibly put on a mask despite knowing his true potential. All of these characters had

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851 Words | 4 Pages

“We wear the mask that grins and lies, It hides our cheeks and shades our eyes-.” This quote is from the poem, “We Wear the Mask” by Paul Laurence Dunbar which is a poem about the struggle that Paul Laurence Dunbar’s family went through during their lives being enslaved. This quote represents the role that a mask can play in covering up true self. By wearing a mask, a person is covering up their unique features. Also, they are not letting anyone get to know them as well as hiding their persona from the public.

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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

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1218 Words | 5 Pages

In Paul Laurence Dunbar’s poem, “We Wear the Mask” the speaker wears a mask to hide his internal suffering because he does not want the rest of the world to think he is weak. This poem relates the prejudice black people face against white people. The speaker starts the poem with the lines, “We wear the mask that grins and lies,” (1). Here he describes the kind of “masks” that he wears.

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362 Words | 2 Pages

In the poem We Wear The Mask, the author’s rhetorical purpose is to show the reader that everybody shows everybody else a different character than what they truly are. For the first analysis, it will be over the ‘pain words’. Some of the pain words that are used are tortured, torn, and bleeding. The pain makes them feel like they need to change or wish they could change so they could show who they really are. It shows that they are hiding what they truly feel and are suffering because of it.

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731 Words | 3 Pages

In this world, an individual has two masks: the mask is the way the individual chooses to express and appear to family and close friends and the second mask is the way the individual expresses his or her self to the outside world. In some cases, people have many different masks for the different groups of people he or she interacts with. The masks people wear can hide and reveal aspects of them, in other words, one-mask reveals who the individual truly is and the other is who the individual wishes they were. In Joyce Carol Oates’ short story “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” Connie, the main character, wears two masks, which coincides with the contradictory themes of the story, fantasy versus reality.

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1027 Words | 5 Pages

In “Richard Cory” by Edwin Robinson, the titular character uses a metaphorical mask to conceal his depression and troubles. He wears it due to his desire of upholding the expectation of the townspeople. Cory, someone who was wealthier and blessed with riches, lived separately from the townspeople. Hence, whenever Cory “went down town / we people on the pavement looked at him” (Robinson 1-2). Adequately intelligent, Cory realizes the jealousy of the commoners with their gazes constantly resting upon him, so he utilizes a mask.

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681 Words | 3 Pages

The poem I chose to analyze is We Wear the Mask, written by Paul Lawrence Dunbar in 1896. Its theme is about hiding our true feelings and emotions, and lying about who we are. When looking at Dunbar’s life history, and the political context at the time, we understand that he efficiently uses this theme in order to talk about how black people have to hide how they feel about their social status and the treatment they receive from white people. He conveys the theme to the audience thanks to a clever word choice. Indeed, he talks about “grin” and “smile”, using facial expressions as a description of the mask (Dunbar, lines 1 & 4).

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802 Words | 4 Pages

This common theme is very apparent but it is even more so in “We Wear the Mask” when Dunbar writes, “We wear the mask that grins and lies, it hides our cheeks and shades our eyes” (Dunbar 1-2).

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1145 Words | 5 Pages

We all desire for others to perceive us in the best way possible. Therefore, either we strive to better ourselves internally and externally, or we put on a pretty face— a mask— to hide our imperfections as to attract and delight the world’s onlookers. This mask comes in many fashions; makeup, an actual physical mask, or a disingenuous smile all can be considered accurate interpretations of “the mask” in Dunbar’s poetic work. This facade allows us more confidence than we would typically have.

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913 Words | 4 Pages

In life we all are a secretive about certain parts of ourselves. For example, if someone is around new people they might not share many things about them with other people. This applies to many stories in literature as well, because new characters keep many secrets that are generally not revealed to other characters. This secretiveness can also symbolize many things in the life around the characters. In the book Behind a Mask; or, a Woman’s Power, author Louisa May Alcott demonstrates this aspect of literature through Jean Muir while symbolizing parts of the Victorian society around them.

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337 Words | 2 Pages

Poet, Edwin Arlington Robinson, in his poem, “Richard Cory,” emphasizes that looks can be deceiving. Robinson purpose is to convey that even a person like Mr. Cory can fall from the weight of the world. He utilizes imagery, tone, and diction to effectively characterize Mr. Cory admirability toward his audience. Robinson captures the people admiration toward Mr. Cory through imagery.

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774 Words | 4 Pages

Most people have a role model or someone they admire; usually the role model is good looking, wealthy, intelligent, well-mannered, generous, joyful, but very rarely does a person’s role model commit suicide. “Richard Cory” is a poem that illustrates this situation in an excellent manner with a well-written story. The poem, written by Edward Arlington Robinson in the late nineteenth century, not only demonstrates that money cannot buy someone happiness, but also shows why it is impossible for one to truly be aware of another person’s emotional and mental state. The poem does not feature many uses of the figures of speech, but rather entails a good narrative element readers can follow, understand, and relate to effortlessly. The purpose of

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985 Words | 4 Pages

In the poem I am Not My Hair, by India Arie, it states, “I am not this skin I am the soul that lives within.” This states that India Arie feels that when she is wearing a mask she is “not herself” and she is not in her skin which means that when she is not wearing a mask she feels that herself, she is in her hair, and she is in control of her own soul. This also shows that the author of this poem might be trying to get control of her own self and that when she is not control of herself than most likely it means that she is wearing a mask. In the poem We Wear the Mask, by Paul Laurence Dunbar, it states, “We wear the mask that grins and lies, It hides our cheeks and shades our eyes.” The author of this poem is trying to tell us readers that when you wear a mask you are hiding your personality and even sometimes how you look talk

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