We Wear the Mask, Paul Lawrence Dunbar

In Paul Lawrence Dunbar’s We Wear the Mask, he portrays the recurring theme of people lying about their true feelings, personalities and emotions. Dunbar uses the repetition of the line “we wear the mask” throughout the poem to symbolize people wearing their “masks” to shade their true emotions. Dunbar also uses end rhyme to add a certain rhythm to the poem as a whole. The poem seems to be taunting the reader as if to say that the reader is also wearing a mask or knows lots of people who are wearing a mask or façade to hide their true personalities.
This poem is very similar to Langston Hughes’ Minstrel Man in the way that they both are trying to convey the same message of fakeness, and how people try to hide everything from the world. They are also similar in the way that both Dunbar and Hughes use short lines in order to convey their message. It is also interesting and shows how much this idea of fakeness and facades is around because both authors decided to write about it in their poems. It is evident that something needs to be done about people putting up a fake personality or mask for the world to see. However the poets differ in their means of showing the wearing of the mask or façade. In Hughes’ poem, he does not make it seem like he is intentionally putting up a front, he makes it seem more as if people misunderstand his personality and emotions. In Dunbar’s poem, it seems as if they are intentionally putting up the front so that the world will not figure out what they are feeling. I think that this also connects to society because of how women of all ages, are really self-conscious about their bodies, and would rather throw up, take pills, or even have surgery just to look like the photoshop-ped models in the magazines they read. I believe that people should just learn to love themselves for who they are, and although it is not easy I believe that with time it can definitely happen.