We wear the mask by Paul Laurence Dunbar speaks of the hypocrisy that the world lives by, where we hide our true emotions from everyone else. Everyone lives behind the facade that all is good and well in their lives so that those around us do not have to share our burdens and count all our tears and sighs. The does so through the employment of juxtaposition, repetition, imagery and the motif of emotions.

Language: First person-collective (good job man) is employed throughout the poem, which possibly means that the poet wants his reader to recognise or realize that she, too, partakes in this hypocrisy. [ give examples of first person collective - we wear our eyes etc.../focus on the active verbs wear smile sing ] As this first-person perspective also includes the persona himself, this alludes to the fact that the persona, like the rest of us, is also guilty of wearing the mask as seen in this debt we pay, it hides our cheeks and shades our eyes and with torn and bleeding hearts we smile. This is further emphasized by the use of absolute terms of all and only in counting all our tears and sighs? and let them only see us, which reinforces the intensity of human ingenuity which is enhanced as the poem progresses through the growing strength of the emotive words, from smile in stanza one, to tears and sighs in the second stanza, to cries and tortured in the third stanza. Furthermore, (i think you need more close analysis here? instead of just giving all the quotes and at the end saying it shows intensity of human ingenuity, try and show progression? how it intensifies as the poem progresses)

Language: Diction - words like debt torn bleeding tortured vile These are some pretty intense diction you can try to close analyze and link back to your point of human ingenuity being very INTENSE.

Style: The poet uses a constant juxtaposition of happiness and misery throughout the poem to highlight the extent to which humans live by hypocrisy. hide our cheeks and shades our eyes underlines how we try to prevent others from seeing blushes on our cheeks, which may be a result of shame, embarrassment or the like, and conceal who we really are by not allowing others to see us through our eyes which are the windows to ones soul. This emphasizes how human identity that is portrayed outwardly may not be genuine, and by extension, the difference between appearance and reality. Additionally, the juxtaposition of words that connote happiness and words that connote sorrow such as smile and cries and sing and vile ( more appropriate for diction) underlines the immense amount of effort people put into ensuring that their true emotions stay hidden behind an illusion of joy.The poet also makes use of repetition to underscore this fact. The personification of human guile to whom we pay this debt to elevates the level of commitment that we take to hide our torn and bleeding under the pretence of happiness as well as how far we would go to mask what truly lies underneath.. torn and bleeding encapsulates the magnitude of the pain that many try so hard to cover up, intensifying the false image of perfect joy that the world strives to upkeep.

Style: Find a better method for this to add on to your style paragraph! Personification maybe?

Form: For a large part of the poem, the rhythm of the lines is steady and has a regular meter, which, perhaps, could be a parallel of how humans try to act as if their lives are in order, in control and organised to maintain a completely flawless image of contentment, although the truth could not be further away from it. (err okay but how does that link to human ingenuity? be more specific) This aligns well with the first three lines of the third stanza when she writes that We smile, but, O great Christ, our cries To thee from tortured souls arise.We sing, but oh the clay is vile. The employment of caesura here effectively causes the initially regular meter of the poem to be disrupted which may suggest that humans can only reveal the true state of their minds and hearts, which is disordered and in a mess just like the rhythm of the lines here, to a divine being. (huh???)This reinforces the extent to which mankind has lost their sense of sincerity, that the only one in the whole universe that they can reveal themselves wholly and truthfully to is a divine being that is invisible to the eyes of Man.

Conclusion: We wear the mask is written to invoke sympathy in its readers for all of mankind and their plight of not being able to project their true selves in front of others and in the process, bringing even more pain and suffering to themselves by suppressing their emotions and hiding it all behind the facade of happiness. Arguably,Paul Laurence may be enlightening readers that everyone in this world wears a mask and is encouraging them to display the genuine versions of themselves. (any alternative interpretation other than constantly repeating human ingenuity?)