The Mask
It's not just a Jim Carrey movie. Before the days of simply wearing them for Halloween, masks were often used as a symbol for deception, hypocrisy, and lies. Dunbar's poem is no different. The spea...
Smile
This is not the sort of smile you have after indulging in your favorite chocolate bar. It's more like the kind of smile a person has when (s)he is upset, but doesn't want to upset you, too. So that...
We
Who are "we"? That's a great question and we have a few possible answers too. The "we" that we get in Dunbar's poem is primarily directed towards black American people as a whole. However, we can a...
The World
It's a big place—in real life and in Dunbar's poem. The world also has a responsibility to recognize the suffering that occurs not just in a personal sense, but a worldly one too. Unfortunately,...