Question

1. Paul Laurence Dunbar’s “We Wear the Mask” and “Sympathy” are poems that resound with suffering. What causes the pain of the people who wear the mask and the repeated injuries of the caged bird? Why do the people and the bird not change their situations? To whom do the sufferers appeal in their pain, and why? Use the poems to support your response

Answer 1

Their suffering is caused by slavery and discrimination, the inability to truly be free. They do not change their situations because they are unable to-they are being restrained and enslaved by others who enforce power over them. The sufferers are appealing to a higher power in their pain because they feel their suffering goes above human help. In "We Wear the Mask" the speaker says "O great Christ, our cries To thee from tortured souls arise" and in "Sympathy" the speaker says that the bird's song is "But a prayer that he sends from his heart's deep core, But a plea, that upward to Heaven he flings". These lines both show that they are singing and appealing to their God to help them and see their suffering to save them.