Comparing Poems 'Sympathy And Wear The Mask'

The poems Sympathy and We Wear the Mask are very similar to one another, they both express the pain and sorrow that the author is trying to hide. Paul Laurence Dunbar was one of the first African-American poets to be truly noticed; his parents were once slaves but escaped. Most of Paul Dunbar’s poems are known to be based off his parent’s experiences on plantations and other locations as slaves. We Wear the Mask is about how slavery can break you emotionally and physically, therefore the slaves are wearing a mask to cover their true feelings behind a false expression. It illustrates how hard working and unhappy slaves were in the 18th century, they had to wear a happy face to their owners or would’ve suffered the consequences. Sympathy is dealing