We Wear The Mask Analysis

Lyric poetry presents the deep feelings and emotions of the poet as opposed to poetry that tells a story or presents a witty observation. Indeed, "We Wear the Mask" is a lyric poem by Paul Laurence Dunbar that explores how in the late nineteenth century, African Americans could not publicly reveal their true feelings about whites' maltreatment without the risk of dangerous retaliation. Through paradox, metaphor, and apostrophe, the speaker ponders how oppressed black Americans are forced to hide their pain and frustration behind a façade of happiness and contentment.
If the poem expresses Dunbar's deep feelings as an oppressed black, it also expresses a paradox. In Dunbar’s rondeau, the repetitive line is “We wear the mask” (1). On one hand, it hides its central issue: not even once does it mention blacks or racial prejudice. In other words, the poem itself wears a mask. On the other hand, it openly parades Dunbar's feelings as a frustrated black across the page. In the end, this is a poem that conceals everything and reveals everything at one and the same time. However, if the reader views the speaker as a kind of universal voice (raceless and ageless) rather than a specific man (Dunbar), then the paradox does not obtain. In the latter case, the general language (including the pronoun …show more content…
God hears the cries that “from tortured souls arise” (11). However, everyone else will only be allowed to see the smiling, singing, jovial face and accompanying voice of the mask. Dunbar understood the delicate and complex meaning of the mask, just as he understood his delicate and complex place as the first prominent black poet within the hostile and dismissive atmosphere of white supremacy. To miss the great tenderness and understanding Dunbar infused in “We Wear the Mask" is to be guilty of only seeing the veil, not what lies behind