We Wear The Mask

In Paul Laurence Dunbar’s, “We Wear the Mask”, Louis Armstrong’s, “Black and Blue”, and Ralph Ellison’s, Invisible Man, all three pieces share a resemblance, because all the poems show people being broken or sad from the inside, but lying and faking a smile on the outside. In “Black or Blue”, Armstrong sings, “I’m hurt inside, but that don’t help my case” (Armstrong 12). Invisible, who is the protagonist in Invisible Man, doesn't follow the “rule” until the book is nearing the end. People prefer the fake version of a person over the real version. In the Civil Rights Movement Era, that’s how black people had to behave, just like Dr. Bledsoe. In, “We Wear the Mask”, Dunbar writes, “Nay, let them only see us, while We wear the mask,” (Dunbar 8-9).