We Wear The Mask
In Paul Laurence Dunbar’s, “We Wear the Mask”, Louis Armstrong’s, “Black and Blue”, and Ralph Ellison’s, Invisible Man, all three pieces share a resemblance, because all the poems show people being broken or sad from the inside, but lying and faking a smile on the outside. In “Black or Blue”, Armstrong sings, “I’m hurt inside, but that don’t help my case” (Armstrong 12). Invisible, who is the protagonist in Invisible Man, doesn't follow the “rule” until the book is nearing the end. People prefer the fake version of a person over the real version. In the Civil Rights Movement Era, that’s how black people had to behave, just like Dr. Bledsoe. In, “We Wear the Mask”, Dunbar writes, “Nay, let them only see us, while We wear the mask,” (Dunbar 8-9).
The poem shows people hiding their identity as shown in “Black and Blue”. The authors of the three pieces are all black men. The poems may be their way of expressing their true feelings about the way blacks are treated and how the blacks must conform to in a white society, because in the era and time that these men lived in, it was hard and dangerous to share your feelings. In “We Wear the Mask”, Dunbar becomes the first published author by writing a poem and following the rules, while also expressing his feelings in a form of poetry. In “Black and Blue”, Armstrong expresses his feelings in a song about a person who asks why he is black and blue. In Invisible Man, Ellison writes about Invisible, who goes through a journey learning about racial discrimination, and this shows how Ellison could show the world, his feelings about the problems in his era. In conclusion, the three authors, Ellison, Dunbar, and Armstrong, may have had strong feelings about the Civil Rights Era and probably expressed those feelings in their pieces.
The poem shows people hiding their identity as shown in “Black and Blue”. The authors of the three pieces are all black men. The poems may be their way of expressing their true feelings about the way blacks are treated and how the blacks must conform to in a white society, because in the era and time that these men lived in, it was hard and dangerous to share your feelings. In “We Wear the Mask”, Dunbar becomes the first published author by writing a poem and following the rules, while also expressing his feelings in a form of poetry. In “Black and Blue”, Armstrong expresses his feelings in a song about a person who asks why he is black and blue. In Invisible Man, Ellison writes about Invisible, who goes through a journey learning about racial discrimination, and this shows how Ellison could show the world, his feelings about the problems in his era. In conclusion, the three authors, Ellison, Dunbar, and Armstrong, may have had strong feelings about the Civil Rights Era and probably expressed those feelings in their pieces.