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Color Blind

 

            
             There is a famous saying by Marcus Aurelius that goes "Reject your sense of injury and the injury itself disappears."" "We Wear the Mask- is a poem fulfilled with human soul that Paul Laurence Dunbar (1872-1906) expresses the oppression of African Americans, related to Phillis Wheatley (1754-1784) in her gloomy poem, "On Being Brought from Africa to America."" Her verses explore the appropriate environment that African Americans need in order to flourish blossoming. Countee Cullen (1903-1948) tells a poignant story in a form of a rhyme poem, "Incident,"" that gives the reader compassion of an eight-year-old African boy. All three poets are expressing through their poems their similar desolate feelings of injury of African Americans in all aspects of life.
             Paul Laurence Dunbar expresses in "We Wear the Mask- the unreal behavior towards the highest race and the touched feelings as being an African American. At the first point, the title "We Wear the Mask- describes people that cover and hide their face. However, the mask represents the illusory smiles and happiness that African people show through the disguise because "It hides their cheeks and shades their eyes."" The traits of the cheeks and the eyes show the lines of bliss or the lines of gloom. The fact that those lines are hidden, the mask symbolizes their illusive bliss. Furthermore, the verse "With torn and bleeding hearts we smile- characterizes the hard feeling of suffering and hardship that obligates black people to undergo discrimination by ignoring it and by hiding the color of their skin. Moreover, Dunbar has the scrupulous way to express the pain using afflicting words in each paragraphs of his poem: "human guile,"" "tears and sighs- and "tortured souls."" These words truly express the ache against colored people. Dunbar explains that African cannot appear as they are because Dunbar tells that colored people would never be considered as the part of the world; African should not fight "the world- but "let it dream.


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