The speaker opens with the title of the poem, so we notice that he is going to go straight to the point instead of giving unnecessary information to build up to it. That lets us know he is a straight forward person. The tone of the poem is bitter. It is about having to hide and cover up their emotions by wearing a mask. This shows that the speaker is angry. Dunbar proves this in the last line “We Were the Mask!” The story in this poem is basically the suffering of black people and why painting on a happy face is a necessity as a survival tactic. The mask can serve as a survival tactic most of the times to prevent violence from happening because some people don’t like to hear what others have to say. Also the mask can hide how people are really feeling so that they can be cordial with others. In addition, the speaker is underestimated, and relatively cool. He is not upset about social injustices. He has a universal voice that’s not limited to just one person or people. Instead of limiting…show more content… This suggests that the poem can be applied to everyone, not only to just the Black Americans that struggle. This tells readers that he can be characterized as being universal. Line 4 begins to develop the truths behind the masks about what they really represent. So at that point we begin to realize that there is pain there. Those hearts are not just torn but also bleeding which emphasizes the struggle and falsehood that the speaker is addressing. If someone is “torn” that usually means that there are two sides pulling at the same time. Also if someone is “bleeding” we can assume that the person is injured figuratively. The poem is written with a repetitive rhyme pattern, until Dunbar interrupts this regular rhythm in the last lines of the second and third stanza. This clearly shows that Dunbar is a mature skillful artisan that uses masking as both theme and
