Invisible man essay

Read the poem “we wear the mask” or “what did I do to be so black and blue” and write an essay in which you address the speaker’s attitude toward the “mask”. Analyse the song as you would a poem. Establish a link to “invisible man”.

Two faced reality:

“I saw all the people behind their masks. I saw behind them and there was pain and suffering”, Vincent Van Gogh. The famous artist’s words resonate deeply with many, the mask being a universal symbol of the facade we sometimes put up as humans. African Americans since the slave the trade and unfortunately up until quite recently have been forced to put up this mask to conceal their inner torments. We wear the mask is a social poem written by author Paul Laurence Dunbar. As an African American, he wrote this poem as a voice for all the suffering people of his community. His piece circles around the significance of a mask, put forth by the tone and message of the poem. We wear the mask is an homage to all the African American cries muffled with the sounds of their songs and strength; and though it was originally intended as such, this poem managed to transgress centuries and transpose itself to depict many social crises of more recent years just as it did for the African American culture many years back.

“We wear the mask that grins and lies”. The poem starts on this line that immediately sets the tone for the rest of it. The contrast in the verbs “grins” and “lies” is paradoxical and ironic, showing the double sided nature of the mask. The theme of secrecy is evident throughout the poem, the idea that they can’t show their true nature to the world. We see this thanks to the many oppositions formed within same lines and stanzas such as “we sing, but oh the clay is vile” or “with torn and bleeding hearts we smile”. The last two lines are extremely powerful yet create a sudden thrust into the sad reality of the matter: the word dream indicates something so far away; a vision that seems almost impossible to obtain. The last line repeats the title and is accompanied by an exclamation mark. This shows the despair they are in as it is an affirmation: we wear the mask. They’ve accepted this mask as a reality. All their pain is addressed in the plural showing the excessive agony.

The poem also has a very solemn and sacred tone to it, reinforced especially by the multiple religious and biblical references. The poet mentions “we sing” to shed light on the African American districts who created blues and jazz to fight the hardships they were exposed to. He makes a call to Christ and this really helps sink in the desperation of the author. The mix of sacred references as of those of the church and God make this poem even more shocking to the reader because it resonates as a cry for help from the speaker.

This type of poem is most commonly known as a rondeau, a form of poetry that follows a song like structure. This form is strategically chosen by the poet to make a link to the aforementioned music the black community was immersed in to cover their misery. The rondeau is characterized by a refrain, in this case the line “we wear the mask”, that is repeated in each stanza. The line is therefore emphasized and affects the reader more as the author makes his point. There is definite

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