We Wear the Mask Analysis

hi um today we're going to be wearing we reading we wear the mask by paul lauren sunbar and um this poem is going to appear on the reading summative a for this unit which we'll be taking next class that is friday december 3rd for gold day students and monday december 6th for black day students okay so um we want to read and analyze this and annotate this with as many notes as we can so that you can use it to help you when you take the test also um we're going to be talking about how this poem connects to the novel so there's a real reason that i i chose this poem okay here we go from the top we wear the mask by paul lauren sunbar paul lawrence dunbar was an influential african-american poet during the early 20th century he was the son of freed slaves and friend of frederick douglass critics have said he was the first to rise to a height a height form a height from which he could take a perspective view of his own voice he was the first to see objectively its humor its superstitions its shortcomings the first to feel sympathetically its heart wounds its yearnings its aspirations and to voice them all in a purely literary form as you read the poem take notes on dunbar's use of figurative language and diction and what these devices reveal about the poem's theme wear the mask that grins and lies it hides our cheeks and shades our eyes this debt we pay to human guile with tor and bleeding hearts we smile and mouth with marid subtleties why should the world be over wise and counting all our tears in size nay let them see only 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 all right so now let's take a look at the questions on the back here so the first question is what is that what does the mask symbolize the mask symbolizes so you want to think about what the mass can represent beyond being a literal mask itself so you want to think about you know does he mean like a mask like a jason mask or you know some other sort of halloween mask um are they really putting on a mask like what what are they doing when they're putting on the mask and why are they putting on the mask what are they trying to hide so think about that for a minute and get an answer in your head and go ahead and take a guess at that we'll go over the answer in a minute okay so now that you have your formed your own opinion let's check your thinking so really uh the mask most clearly symbolizes when they wear the mask they are covering up the pain caused by racism so that's what it means to wear the mask they're acting like everything is okay but it is not okay all right the next thing i want you to think about is who's the speaker how do you know and i want you to highlight the words and phrases that give you the clues to figure this out so remember the speaker in the poem is the voice behind behind the poem and it can be a character that the author is creating and doesn't necessarily have to be a character themselves it could also be an entire group of people so knowing that why don't you form an idea about who you think the speaker is and share it with me okay so now that you have formed an idea about who who you think the speaker is um let's take a look at what the poem what clues the poem gives us and i will explain to you who the speaker is and how i know okay so if we look at the poem i am noticing words like we us are so when i see these words i know that this has to be a group of people because there's a plural pronoun so i think um what most students want to go to is that they want to say that paul lawrence dunbar is the speaker but he by himself can't be the speaker he has to be part of a larger group of people so what group of people could he be part of maybe african-americans since he was african-american and considering that the mask wearing is to cover up the pain they're feeling from racism that probably makes the most sense so sorry i had to pause for just a moment somebody came in with a question um so we know that the speaker is all oops african americans um and we know because of the use of plural pronouns and knowing and knowing what the mask symbolizes all right great so the next question is why must they wear the mask so when we're talking about why they have to wear the mask what do you think why do you think they have to wear the mask if we look at the poem for clues it says things like why should the world be over wise in counting all our tears in size and it also says but let the world dream otherwise we wear the mask so it's kind of what does that say to you about the reason that they have to wear the mask and who is maybe making them or who wants them to wear the mask because they don't think that they as a group of people do okay so why don't you tell me what you think about that all right so now that you've formed your own answer um i'm gonna share with you what i think the answer is um i think that white people don't want to see their the blacks pain i don't want to acknowledge it i mean it's still an issue isn't it that way what we hear about people complaining about in the on social media and in the news regarding race and racism that you know people don't want to admit that it exists so i think that this is kind of this poem is still kind of timely um in the sense that this is a problem that people are still dealing with okay so the next thing that you need to do is paraphrase lines three and four so i'm just going to talk you through this one okay an apparel phrase line three and four so there's lines three and four are sorry four and five i used to be able to read um four and five so ones four and five are with touring bleeding hearts we smile mouth more red with special subtleties so torn and bleeding heart tells uni that they're feeling how probably hurt right so they're kind of saying we smile even though we're hurt so that's what i'm going to write here for for we smile even though we are hurting so then what does line five mean or how can we paraphrase that how can we put it into different words um a mouth with mirror uh with myriad subtleties well what is a myriad of this countless so lots and what is a subtlety that's a small detail or difference that are important but not obvious so small detail the small important detail right so what do you think these small important details with the way that their mouth looks are revealing or could reveal if people looked closely probably the torn and bleeding hearts the pain right so what we get here is if you look closely at our smiles you'll see differences that tell you they are fake all right so the next thing to do is to find and highlight two examples of irony remember irony is where we have a contrast between expectation and reality for example a pilot who is afraid of heights he would not expect somebody that job is to be thousands of feet in the air to be afraid of heights likewise you would not expect a cop to get arrested they're supposed to be enforcing the law and not breaking it so those are some examples of irony so look at the lines in these palms poems and see if you can find the line in the first stanza and the line in the third stanza that tells you that this is um that are that um shows something that you wouldn't expect um people reacting to a situation or being a certain way looking a certain way but feeling another maybe that you wouldn't expect them to be feeling based on how they look so let me know what you think those two lines are okay now that you've identified those two lines let's see if you what you think those two lines are let's see if you're correct so here is one with torn bleeding hearts we smile because you wouldn't be smiling with a if you're hurting like normally and also we have we sing but oh the clay is vile if you were standing on super icky clay i don't think that you'd be singing so these are examples of irony okay so that is the irony last but not least what word would you use to describe the tone in this poem and what words and phrases help to support this choice so remember tone is the attitude of the author toward the subject or in a poem's case it can be the speaker toward the subject but it's an attitude so it's going to be a feeling word what kind of feelings or what kind of ways does it seem like these people are feeling about wearing the mask um so let's look at the poem try and maybe find some clues to what the tone may be they feeling about really feeling about wearing the mask lies debt um they're crying they have tortured souls they have tears and sighs so you know we don't we kind of we don't like that um lying is not something that we like to have to do or at least most people not all the time and not about who we are or how we feel for sure and then we have cries and tortured soul so if that's how they're feeling if those are kind of some of the feeling words we get what's one word that you could use to describe what their attitude seems to be toward wearing the mask tell me what you think all right so i kind of get a couple different vibes from this so like the tears obviously sadness right um i think that there is definitely some sadness in here but there's also um nay let them see only us while we were the mask there's this is very sarcastic um it's a very sarcastic name it's like let them have what they want no big deal except for it is a big deal so um we get that sarcasm there and i think that that all kind of tells the lying i think if you're forced to do something that you don't want to do you kind of may be resentful little angry about it so you're wanting a word that kind of gets both that anger um feeling those angry feelings and the sad feelings and so what do you think a word that does that would be all right now that you've told me what word you would use um i'm gonna throw some out there my favorite one to describe this poem is bitter that to me is like a sad angry person so sad angry i would say bitter they also sound a bit uh resentful which is kind of to me i think you feel resentful when you're angry because something is because you're being wronged in some way or something is hurting you it's making your life unpleasant right so that is what you want to know and be able to explain about just this poem thanks for watching

Channel: DC Teaches English

Views: 4,226

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Id: HhvlqB-ZByY

Length: 19min 13sec (1153 seconds)

Published: Thu Dec 02 2021