Thursday, February 16, 2012

"We Wear the Mask"

Paul Laurence Dunbar’s poetry appears to explore the topic of slavery primarily, including poems written in slave dialect and poems about famous abolitionists Harriet Beecher Stowe and Frederick Douglass.  Due to this common theme, “We Wear the Mask” is likely a poem about the mentality of slaves.  However, “We Wear the Mask” could also apply to humans in general. 

Images such as smiling through “torn and bleeding hearts” and “tortured souls” could apply to slaves putting on a face for their masters; they are “wear[ing] [a] mask” (ln 4, 11).  However, it could also apply more generally to any person suffering from inner or external turmoil that wants to hide his/her pain from others by “wear[ing] [a] mask.”  The second stanza really captures this idea:
            Why should the world be overwise,
            In counting all our tears and sighs?
            Nay, let them only see us, while
                        We wear the mask.  (ln 6-9)
In other words, the speaker poses a rhetorical question, asking why the world should know of every problem of an individual person, and concludes that the world should see the face someone puts on.  The use of the plural “our” and “us” suggests that Dunbar is referring to a group’s shared pain, such as that of an enslaved people; if he were speaking more to an individual wanting to hide his/her pain, he could use the first person pronouns.  However, the idea holds true for an individual.  Plus, the plural could speak not just to a shared pain common to a group but to pain, which is common to all humankind.  I really enjoyed this poem because it did speak to something that is very true in human nature; we have tendencies to hide our problems from the world and “wear [a] mask.”

2 comments:

  1. I agree that Dunbar was speaking of the shared pain of the enslaved people. I also like how you applied it to other issues that individuals struggle with on a daily basis. I believe that masks are worn by everyone, but a huge difference to consider is that the slaves were forced to wear their masks with the potential consequence of beating and extra work if they didn't.

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  2. Yes, I agree. The "masks" idea is universal, but Dunbar's poem addresses the shared pain of slavery and hiding the misery that resulted.

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