Question

Paul Laurence Dunbar’s “We Wear the Mask” and “Sympathy” are poems that resound with suffering. What causes the pain of the people who wear the mask and the repeated injuries of the caged bird? Why do the people and the bird not change their situations? To whom do the sufferers appeal in their pain, and why? Use the poems to support your response.

Answer 1

Answer:

Their suffering is caused by slavery and discrimination, the inability to truly be free. They do not change their situations because they are unable to-they are being restrained and enslaved by others who enforce power over them. The sufferers are appealing to a higher power in their pain because they feel their suffering goes above human help. In "We Wear the Mask" the speaker says "O great Christ, our cries To thee from tortured souls arise" and in "Sympathy" the speaker says that the bird's song is "But a prayer that he sends from his heart's deep core, But a plea, that upward to Heaven he flings". These lines both show that they are singing and appealing to their God to help them and see their suffering to save them.

Explanation:

Answer 2

After analyzing the the pain of the people described in the poems "We Wear the Mask" and "Sympathy," we can answer in the following manner:

1. What causes those people's pain is the fact that they are not free nor treated equally. They have been enslaved, humiliated, beat up. They have been told they are not as good as others.
2. They do not change their situations because the dominant class is preventing them. But the will to change is there. The mask they wear hides their pain, but also gives them strength to keep on fighting. The caged bird even hurts itself in its attempt to fly away.
3. The sufferers appeal to God for He is the one who frees tortured souls:

"But a prayer that he sends from his heart’s deep core,  

But a plea, that upward to Heaven he flings—

I know why the caged bird sings!" (Sympathy)

"We smile, but, O great Christ, our cries

To thee from tortured souls arise." (We Wear the Mask)

The poems by Dunbar

Paul Laurence Dunbar (1872-1906) was an African American poet. Son of enslaved parents, Dunbar's works constantly questioned society, segregation, and racism.

In the poems "We Wear the Mask" and "Sympathy," Dunbar expresses the anger and suffering of African Americans, whose fight for civil rights and equality was long and painful.

Both poems describe that pain and how God became their hope. The world only gave them cruelty, but they never gave up on the fight, never stopped dreaming and working hard.

Learn more about "We Wear the Mask" here:

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