What Does We Wear The Mask Mean

Poetry has always been used to express one’s emotions and thoughts about the world. Emotions and desperation are the main vocal points of the poem, “We Wear the Mask” by Paul Laurence Dunbar. The poem, “We Wear the Mask” by Dunbar was written in the 19th century during a time when many African Americans were oppressed in the United States due to segregation laws but this did not halt Dunbar from gaining recognition from the poem while shedding light on the struggles of African Americans’ emotions. In, “We Wear the Mask” Paul Dunbar uses repetition, punctuation, rhyming scheme, enjambed lines, and end-stopped lines to indicate that people repress their emotions deep down, never expressing them leading them to crack under the pressure of society.

Furthermore, enjambed lines are shown in the poem in the lines, “We sing, but oh the clay is vile, Beneath our feet, and long the mile; But let the world dream otherwise” (Lines 12-14). In these lines in the poem enjambed lines are employed to illustrate how the speaker is forced to suppress their emotions in this world that they are disgusted by because one can only express their emotions that are eating them from the inside out in their dreams rather than in reality. The speaker is unable to forgive the world they live in for taking something so human from them while making them bottle the emotions they have on the inside which forces them to crack under the strain of them finally becoming consumed by their own feelings from the inside out. Lastly, end-stopped lines are presented throughout the poem to enhance the theme in the lines, “We smile, but, O great Christ, our cries, To thee from tortured souls arise.” (Lines 10-11). In this quote, end-stopped lines are employed to demonstrate how the speaker has grown more suffocated by their emotions appearing happy on the outside but behind their mask, they are suffering as they plea for mercy from God from the depth of their tortured soul. They claim that God hears the cries of both themselves and the general population as the result of a soul that has been too severely damaged by the ever-more-repressed emotions that have finally begun to seep out killing them