He wants people to avoid thinking that developing only one true self identity is healthy. A mask allows an individual to see his or her full potential by not having a true identity. Masks have multiple identities based on the certain situations and environments (circumstances) the person is having(undergoing). I agree with Gergens interpretation (assertion) and his psychological
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.
As I read, Paul L. Dunbar’s “We Wear the Mask” I was interested in how he described what a mask represents. It is true that a mask was used to hide a person’s pain, emotion, or mood before the day known as Halloween developed. I love how Paul refers the use of the masks as a black or white person’s escape from other peoples’ worried faces. No one can ever understand what someone else is going through. People can never truly speak their truth or let out their suffering.
In the poem “We Wear the Mask” and the song lyric “The Mask” the poem and song have a similar topic that refers to each other. Both the song and the poem consist of explanations of what happens when the mask is put on. The mask will camouflage identities and hides the true identity. The main concept of this essay is to express how the song and the poem share the same interest of the mask.
This demonstrates how Maus portrays the theme because it says that Valdek and Anja stayed strong throughout the Holocaust. We Wear The Mask portrays this theme because it is a sad but strong poem. For example, in stanza 1, line 4 states, “With torn and bleeding hearts we smile”. This demonstrates how we wear masks portraying the theme because it shows even with sad and broken hearts they stood strong. However, Maus and I wear masks that use vastly different structural elements to portray this
“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.
Paul Laurence Dunbar's poem, "We Wear the Mask," delivers a poignant message in fifteen brief lines. On one hand, the poem pays tribute to the historical struggles of African-Americans. Specifically, Dunbar explores the thought that many African-Americans disguised their true feelings during the racially tumultuous period between the end of the Civil War and the beginning of the Civil Rights Movement. His moving words suggest that the African-American community of this time often wore "the mask that grins and lies" to avoid drawing unwanted attention to themselves.
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
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.
The mask represents the rejection of social standards and the adoption of a more primitive identity, showing how easily people may turn into animals in the face of fear and a lack of
Overwhelmed by these emotions, they feel afraid to express themselves. The speaker introduces the poem through these poignant words, "We wear the mask that grins and lies, It hides our cheeks and shades our eyes," setting the stage for the revelation of the complexities hidden behind the deception. Individuals feel compelled to hide behind this “mask”, indicating they are afraid of rejection if they show their true selves. Everyone is scared to express their true emotions in the face of society, often lying and faking smiles to cover up the bitter truth. The poem acts as a lesson, urging individuals to recognize how they have masked up their true feelings, not realizing their detrimental impact on personal connections and honest relationships.
We wear the mask of collaboration and communication. People wear a different mask everyday because people have different ways of expressing themselves. It talks about how there are many masks and how we can hide ourselves but people wear a mask to show a better wey that they feel and lie about how they feel because people don't want to show how they really feel sometimes. People wear their mask to hide their expressions and to act like they feel different so no one notices that they are not really happy or good. How Collaboration and
It is, obviously, a symbolic one, that is meant to hide the suffering of people. It hides everything, “our cheeks and […] our eyes”, and “the eyes [being] the mirror of the soul”, the mask hides the inner you. (Dunbar, l. 2) (Paulo Coelho, Manuscript Found in Accra). But, in addition to the hiding, there’s also the lie about the emotion. Indeed, the mask isn’t only meant to hide the emotions, but also to create new ones on the surface, as we can see when the author said “We wear the mask that […] lies” (Dunbar, l. 1).
The Poem “We wear the Mask” showed how people tend to hide their problems. Lines one through four states, We wear the mask that grins and lies, It hides our
The idea of a veil or a mask is described throughout many black writers, because it is such a shared and common feeling among them. In Paul Dunbar's poem “We Wear the Masks” he explains how black people wear masks that hides their true feeling “We wear the mask that grins and lies,... With torn and bleeding hearts we smile, And a mouth with myriad subtleties... We smile, but, O great Christ, our cries. To thee from tortured souls arise.”
