We Wear the Mask Essay -- Literary Analysis, Paul Laurence Dunbar

William Shakespeare once proclaimed that â€Å"the past is prologue.† Are we really bound by history? Is our present a mere continuation, a monomorphic continuation if you will, of the novel that is our existence, or can it be developed in a bifurcated fashion? Paul Lawrence Dunbar, prominently noted as the "Poet Laureate of the Negro Race" (p 905) is a prime example of how the past can be depicted in a multifold manner. His two works " We Wear the Mask" and "An Ante-Bellum Sermon" illustrate the double-consciousness that Dunbar was most notorious for. It must be noted, however, that these two works, despite differing in forms of dialect, are conflations of one source, through an intrinsic connection. One will evidently see both the apparent polarity and hidden exemplification associated with the implementation of duality within the aforementioned poems. Dunbar's ability to conflate the standard English verse and the "Negro" dialect not only enables him to illustrate yeste rday's hardships but also tomorrow's promises, in which each poem in itself epitomizes the properties of bifurcation through juxtaposition and exemplification. To exemplify, Dunbar's poem "We Wear the Mask" utilizes the standard English verse to shed light on the hidden "tears and sighs" (p 918,1) of African Americans, particularly slaves. As one maneuvers through the poem, he/she will notice a transition of thought, not necessarily of time. In other words, the time frame does not shift throughout the poem. The past is not a date or a mark on a timeline, it is the previously held belief of the speaker. What shifts is the speaker's perspective of the mask. He transitions from mourning the conditions of those wearing it(past view), to perhaps noting its benefits( ... ...s. We have seen, through the two works analyzed above, how the incorporation and recognition of the past[both in terms of time(Biblical and Antebellum) and thought] depicted a metamorphosis within the "Negro" slave and his ability to transcend this institution of imprisonment. Du Bois, who coined the term double-consciousness, used it to label persons whose identities were multifaceted in nature. Of course we see Dunbar's use of two forms of verse as fitting pieces to the puzzle that is double-consciousness, but, we have yet to realize that we have not found all the pieces. The other pieces lie in the speakers within each poem, as exemplified in this essay. The transformation of perception, initiated and propelled by the acknowledgement of the past(in multiple forms), can certainly be at the crux of the double-consciousness that defines Paul Laurence Dunbar.