Mingdong Chen
Freshman
composition
Ms. Nargiza
Matyakubova
October 15 2013
In the “we wear the mask”,
the author Paul Laurence Dunbar uses the contrast to convey how people can feel
powerlessness and despair during the process of desperately struggling against
the limitation. In this poem, the wearers want to try to take off their masks
to restart the life, but the reality makes them continuous to cover their faces
by wearing the masks.
In the first stanza of the
poem, the author described the wearers’ facial appearance when he states “we
wear the mask that grins and lies, it hides our cheeks and shades our eyes,” it
suggests that the wearers communicate with others when they wear the masks to
hide their true feelings, so that people can only see their emerging cheeks and
eyes instead of their grin and lie, the reason they wear the mask is to “this
debt we pay to human guile”, they usually deceives humankinds’ trust. In the
rest of first stanza, the author depict the inner conflict of those wearers
when he states “with torn and bleeding hearts we smile, and mouth with myriad
subtleties”, which means that the wearers are suffering from wearing the mask,
they cannot show their real faces or smiles because they are limited by the
masks, actually they are getting tired of and regret wearing the mask day after
day, so that as if their hearts are tearing as well as bleeding,
In the second stanza of
poem, author represents the wearers’ grumble toward the reality by “be over-
wise”, and they consider the force make them continuous to cover masks due to
the fact that the world is over-wise, which is their faults. By stating “nay, let
them only see us, while we wear the mask,” the wearers plan to wear the mask
forever.
In the third stanza of
poem, the author explores to look for spiritual guidance as well as the chance
for salvation when he states “we smile, but, O great Christ, our cries to thee
from tortured soul arise.” the wearers need the helps that the real world does
not exist., so they are crying for helps while they smile to others. Next , the
wearers express that they sing through the pain while staying the earth that is
wicked by stating “we sing, but oh the clay is vile beneath our feet, and long
the mile,” “our feet” as well as “long the mile” can make us think of a imagery
of people walk in a long road, those may be the wearers, maybe they are looking
for the hope.
Finally, in “we wear the
mask”, the author Paul Laurence Dunbar utilizes inner conflict of the wearers
to help show us that how people respond to the unfathomable and helpless
limitation around them. Refer to our society, it seems gets cold as well as
dumb, people start to isolate them by covering the mask, the truth is getting
less important, the society is run by the money……
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