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Write your group's thematic statement for "We Wear the Mask" on your paper.

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Discuss with your group. Type up a summary of your group's discussion.
1. What does the mask symbolize?

2. What does this poem reveal about the lives of Black people during this time?

3. Do you relate to the idea of having to wear a "mask" everyday? (Not a literal face mask.) How might people feel if they never get to show their true self behind the mask?

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Watch Maya Angelou read the poem here.

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"We Wear the Mask" by Paul Laurence Dunbar

We wear the mask that grins and lies,

It hides our cheeks and shades our eyes,—

This debt we pay to human guile;

With torn and bleeding hearts we smile,

And mouth with myriad subtleties.

Why should the world be over-wise,

In counting all our tears and sighs?

Nay, let them only see us, while

We wear the mask.

We smile, but, O great Christ, our cries

To thee from tortured souls arise.

We sing, but oh the clay is vile

Beneath our feet, and long the mile;

But let the world dream otherwise,

We wear the mask!

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Write your group's thematic statement for "Douglass" on your paper.

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Discuss with your group. Respond to each question on your paper:

1. What do you notice about the diction (language/ words used)? Why do you think Dunbar chose this type of diction?

2. What are some reoccurring images/ideas in the poem? How do they connect to the poem's message?

3. How does this poem fit the Realism movement?

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This year, we have read a few of Frederick Douglass's works.

Write 3 things you remember about Douglass or his writing we read this year. Write 1 sentence about how that information relates to the poem's meaning.

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READ OUT LOUD - Poetry Reading "Douglass" by Paul Laurence Dunbar

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"Douglass" by Paul Laurence Dunbar

Ah, Douglass, we have fall'n on evil days,
Such days as thou, not even thou didst know,
When thee, the eyes of that harsh long ago
Saw, salient, at the cross of devious ways,
And all the country heard thee with amaze.
Not ended then, the passionate ebb and flow,
The awful tide that battled to and fro;
We ride amid a tempest of dispraise.

Now, when the waves of swift dissension swarm,
And Honour, the strong pilot, lieth stark,
Oh, for thy voice high-sounding o'er the storm,
For thy strong arm to guide the shivering bark,
The blast-defying power of thy form,
To give us comfort through the lonely dark.