![]() Stanza 1 alone contains many layers of unexpected shifts and situational ironies. ![]() “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. The poem closes with a final iteration of the refrain, this time with an exclamation point (“We wear the mask!”). 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”). 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”). 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”). 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. 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”). The speakers confess that they are partaking in an act of dishonesty and dissimulation (“This debt we pay to human guile”). ![]() 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”). “ 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.
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