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What Does We Wear The Mask Mean

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We Wear the Mask: Paul Laurence Dunbar Rating: ★★★★ Dunbar opens his poem by stating how he and others wear masks that “grins and lies.” They hide what they truly feel under a mask of smiles. He conveys how they hide their sorrows from the world and that they do not deserve to know their true feelings. He continues expressing this feeling of sadness and torture that is covered and hidden from the world by faking a sense of joy through singing, smiles, and lies. To start off, I really liked how the author picked a subject that can be relatable in many people’s lives. The subject of people hiding how they truly feel creates a different perspective on what feelings they show. I also enjoyed how the author uses the second paragraph to create a bit more generality in that sadness isn’t the only emotion that can be hidden. He says, “Why should the world be over-wise” (Dunbar, line 6). Dunbar infers that you shouldn’t be an open book, hiding only feelings of sadness, but that the world doesn’t deserve to know all your hidden feelings. …show more content…

Not having a person to trust with your negative emotions takes a toll on you. “Nay, let them only see us, while We wear the mask” (Dunbar, lines 8-9) conveys how you shouldn’t really trust anyone. Furthermore, the title is enigmatic because of the word “We.” By saying, We Wear the Mask, it implies that the feeling of sadness isn’t completely hidden, but rather they’re in a group and know who else is covering a feeling of sadness. Dunbar seems to focus so much on hiding his feelings, but may have a group that shares what they hide

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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

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“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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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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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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In the poem it says, “we wear the mask that grins and lies, it hides our cheeks and shades our eyes.” This shows that people hide themselves so people can’t see who they truly are and so they can fit in with non-black people. Black people we’re probably scared that white people will judge them and do something bad to them for not being the same color as them. They were afraid of being judged, to being mistreated by them. This is why they decided to hide their true

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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.

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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.

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Firstly, in the poem underface the line “ there's a face that none can see” shows that hiding your face will leave you anonymous therefore That's why Shel Silverstein wants us to be true to ourselves and be honest. Subsequently, if you are hiding your inside face to be a good presentation to the outside world it will leave you miserable and depressed because it makes you feel like in order to make the world happy you have to hide your true self additionally shel silverstein's poem teaches you that you don't have to conceal your identity to make the world a better place. This shows how hiding your true identity can cause you to be unhappy and dishonest . In the poem underface it says a “little less smiley and a little less sure" which means the speaker is dejected with themselves due to being undisclosed with themselves so in all they hide their true selves not knowing that being unknown can make them even more fed up . For one thing, hiding yourself under a mask because you're depressed can leave you even more sadder because it will make you feel like you're not the same as others.

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Masks are worn by individuals to cover part or all of their faces, usually as a disguise. This quote illustrates how people disguise their true feelings by wearing masks with grins. In actuality, he is not referring to a physical mask; he uses the mask to symbolize hiding their true feelings from the outer world, as a strategy to protect oneself from others. A rhetorical device Dunbar uses is hyperbole, which can be seen in the line "With torn and bleeding hearts we smile." (Dunbar p.654).

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