'We Wear the Mask' by Paul Laurence Dunbar (1895) is a fantastic poem written by a fantastic poet that is well worth reading. Dunbar's purpose in this poem was to: (a) convey his views on racism; (b) infer themes regarding the African American's masquerade; (c) criticise White America for racial discrimination; and (d) accomplish a, b, and c by bypassing the restrictive generic conventions of African American literature. 'We Wear the Mask' tells of how African Americans choose to wear the mask of content and happiness despite their suffering caused by racism and inequality so that they can live harmoniously. Dunbar's work was incredibly significant to the time in which it was produced because it discussed one of the most prevalent topics in America's history: African Americans and racial equality.
Paul Laurence Dunbar was the first African-American poet to achieve national critical acclaim. Born in Dayton, Ohio, on the 27th of June 1872, Dunbar was the son Matilda (a former slave) and Joshua Dunbar (a slavery escapee and Massachusetts infantry and cavalry civil war serviceman). Dunbar published a large body of dialect poems, Standard English poems, essays, novels and short stories before his death at the age of 33. His work often addressed the difficulties encountered by members of his race and the efforts of African Americans to achieve equality in America. Dunbar was praised both by the prominent literary critics of his time and his literary contemporaries.
During Dunbar's lifetime time, America was experiencing movements towards equality for African Americans advanced as quickly as they receded and vice versa. One example of this was the Civil Rights Act of 1875. The act was passed by Congress in February 1875 and guaranteed that everyone, regardless of race or colour, was entitled to the same treatment in public accommodations (i.e. inns, theatres, and other places of public amusement). The Supreme Court later deemed the Act unconstitutional in the Civil Rights Cases of 1883. Much of the African American literature produced during this time focused on racial issues, subject to the generic conventions.
The works of Dunbar were subject to the generic conventions of African American literature. Thomas Morgan (2004) highlights many of these generic conventions in his journal article 'The city as refuge: constructing urban blackness in Paul Laurence Dunbar's The Sport of the Gods and James Weldon Johnson's The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man'. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, the majority of African American images in popular poetry and fiction were confined to Southern-based pastoral depictions. The plantation tradition inherently connected African Americans to the country by marking them as rustic, and portraying them as simple, primitive people. Positive depictions of African Americans in urban settings were neither prevalent nor acceptable to the literary establishment. Once these stereotypes had been established in the public's mind, literary works that did not replicate the acceptable literary types were dismissed for their lack of fidelity to the established codes of ethnic description. Subsequently the racist and stereotypical descriptions of African Americans constructed by Southern authors moved into the mainstream. Validation stemmed from compliance with the established parameters used to represent African Americans. This was the paradox that authors like Dunbar faced; their personal knowledge of African American life was acceptable only if it mirrored established conventions. The textual themes that constituted the bulk of African American poetry and fiction in the 1880s and 1890s revolved around: working for racial uplift, protesting the racist practices of white Americans, and developing a sense of racial pride. A significant portion of African American literature was written in African American Vernacular English (which is an African American variety/dialect of American English).
'We Wear the Mask' embodies Dunbar's views on racism and the struggle for equality for the African-Americans. Dunbar is critical of White America, the majority of which, is unaware of the masquerade and oblivious to the injustice of racial discrimination. This poem is skilfully written in formal English in such a refined way that Dunbar dissimulates his true self. Although Dunbar writes with his experiences as an African American, Dunbar assumes the personae of the author as anonymous. The purpose of this is to masquerade the race of the poet so that the poem would be relatable to any reader, and thus bypassing the restrictive generic conventions of African American literature (requiring compliance with racist stereotypes). Dunbar does this so well that one could be forgiven for completely overlooking the underlying African American significance of this poem. Dunbar also employs the congregate voice of African-Americans for the personae by using 'we' instead of 'I'. This also helps to remove the connection to the author, and further establishes the personae of the author as anonymous. The form of 'We Wear the Mask' is an African American lyric poem written in formal English. The structure of 'We Wear the Mask' consists of 4 stanzas: a quintain, a quatrain, and two tercets. All the lines in the poem, except Lines 9 and 15 (which are refrains), are in iambic tetrameter. As far as techniques go, the controlling figure of speech in this poem is a metaphor, expressed in the first line, and extended through the rest of the poem. Dunbar uses the extended metaphor of a 'Mask' to infer themes that African Americans choose to wear the mask of content and happiness despite their suffering caused by racism and inequality so that they can live harmoniously.
The purpose of this poem was to: (a) convey Dunbar's views on racism and the struggle for equality for the African-Americans; (b) infer themes that African Americans choose to wear the mask of content and happiness despite their suffering caused by racism and inequality so that they can live harmoniously; (c) criticise White America for being unaware of the African American masquerade and oblivious to the injustice of racial discrimination; and (d) accomplish a, b, and c by masquerading the race of the poet so that the poem would be relatable to any reader, and thus bypassing the restrictive generic conventions of African American literature (requiring compliance with racist stereotypes for validation). All in all, Dunbar accomplishes what he set out to do.
References
Dunbar, P. L. 'We Wear the Mask', in P.L. Dunbar, Majors and Minors. Whitefish, USA: Kessinger Publishing
Morgan, T. (2004). The city as refuge: constructing urban blackness in Paul Laurence Dunbar's The Sport of the Gods and James Weldon Johnson's The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man. African American Review. 38(2) 213-225
