We Wear the Mask Essay Questions

How does the poet effectively and subtly universalize his argument?

The poet consciously adopts a point of view that is pluralized. The title could have been “I Wear the Mask” or “They Wear the Mask” or even “Those Who Wear the Mask.” By using first-person plural pronouns such as “we” and “our,” the poem draws readers into a collective consciousness with which they can identify and empathize. The poem also sets up an "us vs. them" paradigm by identifying those who do not wear the mask as “them.” The readers first unconsciously acquaint themselves with the wearers of the mask, then encounter a dilemma in which they must choose between two opposing sides: Are they with "us," wearing the mask, or are they a part of “them”?

What is significant about the language in the opening line?

While the opening seeks universality of recognition with the assertion “We wear the mask,” it then immediately attributes the deceptive qualities of that mask to the mask itself “that grins and lies.” This is an essential point of the poem: that it is not the wearer of the mask adopting a deceptive persona, but the mask is the agency of misrepresentation. This subtle distinction raises a wealth of possibilities. If the mask serves to hide the true feelings of the wearer, why does the wearer choose to don it? Is the mask donned out of an actual desire to hide one’s true feelings, or has the mask been given to the wearer with a desire by the giver not to have to see the agony of the real face behind the mask? With this one tiny distinction, the poem forces the reader to question something that is not directly addressed in the text: what is the origin of the mask? Where did it come from? How did the wearer get it and what was the original purpose?

How might the speaker of the poem be considered an example of the ancient archetype of the trickster?

The trickster is a figure usually lacking in the traditional modes of power: he has little to no authority, he does not possess the strength of the typical epic hero and he likely has either no path to inherited empowerment or he faces a path obstructed by rivals endowed with more traditional heroic attributes. The trickster is thus forced to rely on intelligence, wit, and manipulation. Another word for this type of manipulation, of course, is deception, hence the term trickster. In a sense, the speaker is admitting to the more powerful that all those making up the “we” wearing the mask have been pulling a great deception on them for a very long time without most of them having any level of awareness. The trickster gets what he needs by putting on his own false fronts and projecting a pretense that disguises his actual ambition. The happy face of the mask is seen one way by “them,” but it hides a completely different ambition as well as a different emotional state on the part of the “we.” By donning this façade, the wearer has been able to achieve ambitions that would likely have gone unrealized without the mask.