We Wear the Mask

A detailed Summary of We Wear the Mask

In this paper we will examine how human faces are equated with wearing a mask and lies are a necessary part of everyday life. Throughout the poem Dunbar defends why he feels there is a need to hide the true self. This can be a coping mechanism because historically slaves had to hide their true feelings from their white masters. The masks Dunbar writes about hides and separates the viewer from the viewed just like a performer's mask on stage is different from real life. An actor wears different personalities as part of their job just like wearing a mask. In this context Dunbar shows that wearing the mask as much of a job as well as necessity that he dislikes doing it but he has no choice. This can be seen when Dunbar writes, But let the world dream other wise We wear the mask! (15-16) Dunbar could also be writing about himself he pretends to be what he wasn't in order to gain acceptance by his peers. As the son of ex-slaves Dunbar could have suffered discrimination and rejectio!

n from his peers unless he pretended or put on a certain attitude. The line but let the world dream other wise can be that if the outside people believe the image that the mask projects (15).

of lying and wearing a good face still applies today because we all say, "How are you?" We greet people by asking how they are doing when we expect to hear, "I'm fine, thank you or something to that extent. We don't really want to know how bad life is because if someone didn't conform and answer as we expected we'd say he or she is weird. In other words this still applies in present day society where we'd much rather hear a lie than the naked truth. This debt we pay to human guile; With torn and bleeding hearts we smile. And mouth with myriad subtleties. (4-6) Here in these three lines Dunbar talks about the sacrifice we make when we have to lie. The sacrifice would be giving up truth and replacing it with a lie accepted as truth. The debt for human guile is that we as people on the whole can't show true the real feelings and emotion without fear of having it being used against us. This can be seen when Dunbar wrote, Why should the world be over-!

e world be over-wise. In counting all our tears and sighs? (7-8)

One important function of the mask is to make cover the individuality and encourage conformity. Dunbar talks about conformity in "We wear the Masks because in order to conform to the norm or majority we'd have to lie and act a certain way, like wearing masks. Slaves conformed to their white master's ideals because that was the only way they could survive. Dunbar adopted the forms and conventions associated with the white literary canon perhaps to be accepted into the literary world dominated by white writers. This shows that conformity and even pretending is necessary in order to be accepted by people different to him. Everyday life is a performance and we being it's actors have to play our part and wear our smiling masks and the audience are other people also wearing masks who watch.

orld without wearing the mask

Some common words found in the essay are:
Relating Dunbar's, , wear mask, wearing mask, white masters, counting tears sighs, smile mouth myriad, torn bleeding hearts, mouth myriad subtleties, hearts smile mouth, nay wear, business personal, outside world, dunbar writes, feelings white, watching public, taking mask,

Approximate Word count = 1242
Approximate Pages = 5 (250 words per page double spaced)

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