What Is A Mask Beneficial

Masks, what they are and why they're beneficial

Ian Afseth

April 10, 2015

7/8

What is a mask? You probably know what a physical mask is, but what about a metaphorical ‘mask’? People use these ‘masks’ when they are hiding their intentions, or using a fake persona. You’ve probably done this many times in your life, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. People can wear a ‘mask’ to do something
In the story, a kid named Victor is trying to impress a girl named Teresa on his first day of 7th grade. He does this by in the Spanish class he has with Teresa, he does this by pretending to know the language he’s supposed to be taught. By doing this, he is putting on the fake identity of a person who knows Spanish. His teacher quickly breaks through the fake identity, but sympathizes with him since he was in a similar situation in college. This is an example of someone putting on a ‘mask’ for their own gain, and resulting in positive results, without negatively impacting others. Another example of Victor, putting on a fake ‘mask’ is when he is trying to get attention from other girls in his class. Victor realized that male models in magazines always seemed to smirk in their photos. With this knowledge, he decides to smirk at the all the girls' he sees. His friends start to do the same thing, and they end up succeeding in attracting the girls attention. This is yet another example of people having positive results from wearing a mask. Some people rebuttal this knowledge by saying that these positive results are only temporary, and it would come back to bite them, such as Teresa finding out Victor doesn’t speak Spanish. This is simply not true, if you take the proper precautions against this, it’s likely to not happen. An example of this would be, in the story,
A story that largely incorporates this theme is the story ‘Charles’ by Shirley Jackson. In the story, it is told from the perspective of the mother that her son Laurie, comes home from preschool every day and talks about the ‘Exploits’ of a boy in his class named Charles. The boy Charles is, for lack of better words, a rude, insolent, disrespectful, jerk, with no respect for his classmates or teachers. Laurie continues to talk about Charles bad deeds every day, until Laurie’s parents decide to meet Charles parents, at a PTA meeting. The parents meet the teacher, who says there is no Charles in her class, meaning that Laurie must have made this fake identity. This shows that Laurie was able to wear a ‘mask’ by using this fake identity, and had positive results by avoiding trouble. Laurie’s was also received a secondary beneficial result from being able to tell his parents what he did, without receiving punishment. A significant group of people would say that Laurie would be punished for the things he did and as a result the ‘mask’ created a negative result. This is an incorrect statement because, since the teacher never bothered to send an email or a letter to his parents telling them about the horrible things he did, they probably won’t tell his parents now. This is yet