In Lark’s poem, We Wear the Mask by Paul Laurence Dunbar, it talks about how African Americans need to wear a mask to hide their true feelings, they only show what they want the rest of society to see. A similar concept of wearing a mask is found in the very beginning of the first chapter of Invisible Man, with the narrator's grandfather. We wear the mask can be used as a guide to help understand the reasoning behind why the grandfather decided to use hidden tactics to fight the white supremacy and only on his deathbed reveal the true “fight” that he had been fighting all along.
We Wear the Mask uses the term mask as a way for the African Americans to hide their true emotions and project only what they want to be seen. This is very problematic because they hide the “tears and sighs” while all that the world sees is the smiles that are on the mask. This relates very closely to the feelings that the grandfather of the narrator holds. The grandfather is shown on his deathbed, where after a life of clear submission and consideration of being "the meekest of men" he announces that his son should continue the "good fight" and appeal to the white man to such extremes that it would make them sick(Ellison 13). This statement catches the narrator and the whole family by surprise, so much so that they rush the smaller children out of the room. The c mask that the grandfather had been wearing his whole life had finally come off and exposed the true emotions of the grandfather. In the grandfather’s head the mask made him a spy and tricked the white people into believing that he was submissive the whole time, which made him a secret rebel. The poem makes very similar points, it allows the world the believe one thing but only the mask wearers know the truth about what they feel. In the poem Dundar asks "Why should the world be over-wise, In counting all the tears and sighs?" which really reinforces the separation between the people who wear the mask and the rest of society (Harper 76). However it makes the reader ponder if the separation that is being made is positive?
The grandfather of the narrator thinks that the separation is an essential portion of defining his life and the life and injustices of African Americans, and it allows the lack of “clear revolt” of wearing the mask to be the revolt in itself. This further affects the narrator and will hopefully influence his journey into becoming the character that he was in the prologue
-Jan O
Works Cited:
Ellison, Ralph. Invisible Man. New York: Vintage International, 1995. Print.
Harper, Michael S., and Anthony Walton. The Vintage Book of African American Poetry. New York: Vintage, 2000. Print.
I think its interesting also how different the masks in the poem and in the book are. In Dunbar's poem, the mask is something the people wear to disguise emotions, however in I.M., a majority of the characters simply manipulate the presumptions of the white characters. Our narrator seems to use both methods in some way, with his use of laughter, and his abuse of the perceptions white characters have of him as we see in the prologue
ReplyDeleteThe connection between Dunbar's speaker (who represents a larger "we") and the grandfather is interesting to consider--just as we saw overlaps but also differences between the grandfather's strategy and Bledsoe's in the novel, there are also differences here. The grandfather specifically uses the language of subversion, depicting the "front" of agreeable humility as necessary in order to pursue a covert subversion of white power--we might say he's a proto-revolutionary in his orientation. Dunbar's speaker laments being forced to wear the mask, and his reasons seem to have more to do with pride--with not letting the oppressor know that you are hurting, almost not wanting to give them the satisfaction. There's also this sense of saying something like, "You've seen all these smiling, happy black people in movies and popular culture, but that isn't the reality of the situation." Either way, the metaphor of the mask and Ellison's metaphor of invisibility have a number of overlaps, and I was very glad that Lark chose to present this poem when she did.
ReplyDeleteI think the point that you propose is very interesting. I agree that the Grandfather's reflection as being a "spy" is supporting to that idea that he is wearing a disguise, a mask. But I also think it is significant to mention another reading of the poem. I think the poem also discusses the idea that black people felt they had to wear the mask. In order to keep walking amongst the struggle and sadness they felt they had to put on this false sense of hope to carry them through. I think it is significant to mention in the context of Invisible Man, it seems like the Narrator is unaware-- yet as readers we can see that he suppresses these things that happen to him (the Battle Royale for example) in order to keep moving.
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