Summary
“We Wear the Mask” is a poem in the first-person plural voice, and consists of three stanzas that describe the plight of racialized performance from the perspective of an oppressed (presumably African American) community.
Stanza 1 begins with the poem’s refrain (which repeats the title, i.e., “We wear the mask [...]”) followed by a description of the mask: it creates a false smile (“grins and lies”), and suppresses the true emotions of its masquerader (“hides our cheeks and shades our eyes”). The speakers confess that they are partaking in an act of dishonesty and dissimulation (“This debt we pay to human guile”). They then contrast their physical and emotional injury (“torn and bleeding hearts”) with their outward performance of wellness (“we smile”); they add that they must speak in a way that subtly conceals their genuine feelings (“mouth with myriad subtleties”).
In Stanza 2, the speakers express (via a rhetorical question) their wish to keep the rest of the world away from the truth of the mask. While the world may attempt to comprehend the trouble of the masqueraders (“counting all our tears and sighs”), the latter wish to be seen by the former only when they are performing their false identities (“let them only see us, while / We wear the mask”).
Stanza 3 restates that the speakers “smile,” yet goes on to beseech Christ for compassion (“our cries / To thee”), for the souls of these masqueraders are “tortured.” The speakers not only smile, but also “sing”; they are nevertheless in physical and emotional agony from their toil and long journey (“oh the clay is vile [...] and long the mile”). Despite the magnitude of their pain, the speakers restate that they would prefer to leave the world oblivious to their experience (“But let the world dream otherwise”). The poem closes with a final iteration of the refrain, this time with an exclamation point (“We wear the mask!”).
Analysis
“We Wear the Mask” explores different layers of identity, one deployed on top of another—the poem’s form, too, is layered with various thematic and figurative twists and turns.
Stanza 1 alone contains many layers of unexpected shifts and situational ironies. While the speakers refer to themselves in the plural form (“We”), what they wear is a single “mask”—the personalities, emotions, and identities that may exist within this group are being suppressed under a singular, totalizing form of performance (just as individual identities are dismissed under racial stereotypes). The speakers then admit that the act of masquerading involves “guile” and the “mouth[ing]” of “subtleties.” This confession, along with the disembodied imagery (e.g., “cheeks,” “eyes,” “hearts,” “smile,” “mouth"), betrays a disconnect between the mind and body—the moral beliefs and the embodied actions—of the masquerader. Are the speakers masquerading truly by choice, or is it circumstance that forces them to do so?
At first glance, Stanza 1 seems to sonically stabilize the poem with its laying out of the poem’s formal features: The first line establishes the iambic tetrameter; the first four lines set up the rondeau’s two dominant rhymes (e.g., “lies/eyes,” “guile/smile”); the consonance of the “w” initiates a phonetic pattern that persists throughout the poem (e.g., “we,” “wear,” “world,” “over-wise,” “other-wise”). Yet it is also in this stanza that the poem is formally destabilized. “[S]ubtleties,” for instance, is an eye rhyme with “lies” and “eyes” and disrupts the exact rhyme scheme.
Stanza 2 shifts the focus of the poem to the outside world—if the speakers represent the African-American community, then this “world” refers to a white-dominant society. The disembodiment motif continues: “tears and sighs” are metonymies which are associated with, and represent, the emotion of grief; yet the world engages only superficially with this grief when it “count[s]” the speakers’ tears and sighs. The mechanical and impersonal act of “counting” is contrasted later with the speakers' song, which is a radically different and more emotional medium of communication. Once again, situational irony takes place in this stanza—despite the fact that Dunbar, with this poem, is in effect reaching out to an apathetic audience, his speakers resist communication with their listeners. (Perhaps this discrepancy reflects Dunbar’s conflicting hopes and concerns.) Formal twists, too, complicate the prosody of Stanza 2: Lines 8 and 9 disrupt the iambic meter with the ejaculation “Nay” and the jarring enjambment across “while / We”; the refrain (“We wear the mask”) likewise interrupts the iambic rhythm and cuts the stanza short.
Stanza 3, shifting to an agricultural and migratory setting, and loaded with images of slavery and displacement, marks the climax of this poem. The stanza features a series of Christian allusions which underscore the speakers’ desperation, as well as the gravity of their situation: “O great Christ” (Jesus Christ), “oh the clay is vile” (the creation of humans from clay), and “long the mile” (the exodus of Israelites out of slavery). Amid these allusions to Biblical slavery, salvation, and existential agony, the speakers “smile” and “sing.” These smiles and songs somewhat seem different from previous performances of positivity—here, it is not the “mask” that “grins,” but the speakers themselves (“We smile”; “We sing”) that celebrate. Dunbar may be communicating the strength and resilience of the African-American community in these moments of empowerment.
Yet these scenes of positivity are quickly overturned, as “smile[s]” become “cries,” and songs are interrupted by the vileness of the clay. The poem ends on a cynical note, stating that the world shall “dream otherwise” and that the gap of understanding between the masqueraders and their oppressors will never be overcome. The exclamation point at the end seems to be not only one of protest, but also one of sarcastic laughter. Is Dunbar truly pessimistic? Or does his poem—with its ironic and sarcastic critique of a masquerading world—awaken its readers from their complicit “dream[s]”?
