Explore the poem

Known for the authenticity of his representations of African-American life in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries Dunbar wrote using an African-American dialect style but also in a more formal and conventional style as seen here with ‘We Wear The Mask’. What do you associate with masks? Disguise? Concealment? Protection? Deception?

The mask is clearly a potent symbol within the poem as the poet explores the “tears and sighs” of the human condition. Dunbar uses the collective voice of “we” from the beginning suggesting the universality of the experiences he is describing but inevitably, knowing Dunbar’s background, we might conclude that this is also a poem about black lives and suffering in the 1890s.

In the third and final verse the poet addresses Christ directly whilst the reference to “tortured souls” suggests both the anguish of the people beneath the mask and the idea of the fall of man and lives defined by suffering and sinfulness.

How do you respond to the rhyme patterns in the poem? Do they add to the impact of the poem? What is the significance of the repetition and placements of the “We wear the mask” phrase within the poem?

About Paul Dunbar

Paul Dunbar was one of the first African-American poets to be widely known and admired in America. His parents were freed slaves and Dunbar used some of their tales of plantation life in his work.

After a successful reading at the World’s Fair in Chicago, Dunbar’s poems were picked up by national newspapers and magazines. His second collection, Majors and Minors, appeared in 1895, with the ‘majors’ representing poems written in standard English and the ‘minors’ referring to his very successful dialect poems.

Dunbar’s fame spread, and he travelled to England to give readings. On returning to America, he worked at the Library of Congress in Washington DC and married the writer Alice Ruth Moore. However, his health began to deteriorate and, although he continued to be a prolific writer, producing several novels, song lyrics and further collections of poems, he died of tuberculosis in 1906, at the age of thirty‑three.

Read more about Paul Dunbar in the
American National Biography