Analysis of “We Wear the Mask” In one of Paul Lawrence Dunbar’s most famous poem’s “We Wear the Mask,” he describes the harsh reality of the black race in America and how they hide their grief, sadness, and broken hearts under a mask for a survival strategy towards whites. “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.” In the first verse, the mask is taken off. The “We” of the poem describes the black community that lives a double life, the masked and the unmasked. Dunbar included the word “mask” in his poem because historically it was a false deceptive role-playing that was acceptable for a survival strategy by blacks and it maintained a sense of empowerment in a racial society. The word “lies” is a simple word but the mask not only