Paul Laurence Dunbar's poem “We Wear the Mask” is a well-known work that highlights his ability to create emotionally moving Standard English poems. In this fifteen-line poem, Dunbar highlights the suffering of black individuals and the need to maintain happy deminors to survive. It emphasizes the idea that black individuals are an example of strength and suffering, but maintains the allusion to docility. “We wear the Mask” is written in a closed form of iambic tetrameter with a regular rhyme scheme. Dunbar builds the regular rhyme scheme in the last lines of the second and third verses with “We Wear the Mask.” Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essay “The Mask” is the obvious and clear heart of the poem and its meaning. The opening words are not only the refrain of the poem but also the title and clearly describes the point of Dunbar's poem. The repetition of the phrase “We wear the mask” reminds us of how persuasive the mask is; “We smile, but, O great Christ, to you our cries rise from tortured souls” (lines 10-11). There may be a smile on their faces, but beneath that shield is a world of torture and pain. Repetitive phrases in the poems indicate important details, but the fact that "We wear the mask" is also used in the poem adds meaning to the phrase. As the poem continues, the narrator's perspective on the masks changes from a tone of anguish to a sense of pride in his benefits. Dunbar uses a continuous repetition of black individuals hiding their emotions behind the mask. This is done to highlight the deception that the black individual is happy rather than a "tortured [soul]" (line 12). The first two lines, “we wear the mask that smiles and lies, hides our cheeks and shades our eyes” (line 2) introduces this image of deception and concealment. The mask hides the cheeks and especially the eyes. Human eyes are linked to the essence of humanity since “the eyes are the mirror of the soul”. It is important that the mask hides the cheeks and eyes because that is where humans most likely express their emotions, thus supporting the idea of ​​deception. The masked individuals smile despite having a “torn and bleeding heart” (line 5) to create more pleasant images for the white community. This is an introduction to the image that white Americans see when they view black individuals. Using the word “grin” instead of smile is more misleading than “happy.” The image behind the smile may allude to smiling and enduring pain to hide true feelings. This smile hides the full extent of the emotional conflict that black individuals go through. In the transition to the third stanza, the poem transforms from mourning the "mask" to being content with its meaning. The speaker presents “No, let them just see us, while we wear the mask” (lines 9-10). These lines infer the insinuation that wearing the mask is not as horrendous as it seems, there is a sense of benefit behind it At this moment in the poem, Dunbar presents the idea that black individuals should be content with restricting their emotions and hide behind the mask. However, he is not inferring that the black community should be happy in this situation, but rather highlighting this change in perception of the mask. There is no longer a sense of mourning with the use of the mask but rather a pride in this tool of advantage. The punctuating use of the exclamation point in the final stanza of the repeated “Let's wear the mask!” (line 15) demonstrated this point. There is a sense of jubilation in his.