We Wear The Mask By Paul Laurence Dunbar

The poem “We Wear the Mask” by Paul Laurence Dunbar has the message of suppressing one’s emotions in order to appeal to others who appear to be superior. This is shown in the line “This debt we pay to human guile” because the speaker believes that the wearers of the mask do so either in shame or to protect themselves from those who have achieved so much more than themselves. The mask conceals their “tears and sighs” because they do not want them to be seen. But the mask could also hide their sense of inferiority from other mask wearers, and perhaps this is why the mask is worn, for self-defense despite the knowledge that they are all the same.
I feel as though many other classmates would agree that they can relate to this poem’s message, at