I really liked reading Paul Laurence Dunbar's writing We Wear The Mask. I thought it was great and one that a lot of people can relate to at some point in their lives. I thought that this poem was a great examples of realism. "Realism is the attempt to depict life as it actually exists, not as the author wants it to be in the present or the future, or imagines it was in the past. A realist carefully chooses details that illustrate this vision" (Werlock). I think that is what is cool about realists is they are not afraid to say what they need to say, because they just lay it al out there for people how it really is. During this time, writers had just turned from romanticism to realism, but their was a reason for that. "Writers during this period were turning away from romanticism because they wanted to write about something that was closer to ordinary life ("Regionalism" 487). I think the reason that they were turning away from romanticism, because they were going through the crazy things in the wars and just wanted to share with people the truth that was going on. I saw realism in this poem when Paul Laurence Dunbar said, "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" (Dunbar 571) I think that what he was trying to say here was that we wear this mask that hides are face because we do not want people to see the things that we are going through or that something is bothering us. I think that Dunbar was just trying to say the truth about what people were thinking then, and how they felt ashamed in front of people. I think that a lot of people can relate to this. I know sometimes we all are ashamed at some point of something that we have done, so we wish that we could just wear a mask and pretend that no one knows.
Douglass was a pretty good poem, but I did not enjoy it as much as We Wear The Mask. This Poem, Douglass, was about how Paul Laurence Dunbar wished that Frederick Douglas was alive, and he was sharing with him the things that were going on right then with everything. Dunbar stated, "Ah, Douglass, we have fall'n on evil days, Such days as thou, not even thou didst know, When thee, the eyes of that harsh long ago, Saw, salient, at the cross of devious ways, And all the country heard thee with amaze. Not ended then, the passionate ebb and flow, The awful tide that battled to and fro; We ride amid a tempest of dispraise" (Dunbar 571). I know that this poem is realism, because Dunbar was sharing with this dead person, or imagining he was, about how the country was falling on evil days and how he thought the country was going down hill. I thought this was realism, because he was sharing the real life things that were happing to the country in Dunbar's eyes. "Realists did not want to transcend reality, but to show the experiences that we go through everyday" ("Regionalism" 287). "Realism is the attempt to depict life as it actually exists, not as the author wants it to be in the present or the future, or imagines it was in the past. A realist carefully chooses details that illustrate this vision" (Werlock).
Dunbar, Paul Laurence. "Douglass" American Literature Textbook. Columbus: McGraw-Hill, 2009. 570. Print.
Dunbar, Paul Laurence. "We Wear the Mask" American Literature Textbook. Columbus: McGraw-Hill, 2009. 571. Print.
Regionalism and Realism." Glencoe Literature. Comp. Jeffrey D. Wilhelm, Douglas FIsher, Beverly A. Chin, and Jacqueline J. Royster. American Literature ed. Coulmbus: McGraw-Hill, 2009. 487. Print.
Werlock, Abby H. P. "realism." The Facts On File Companion to the American Short Story, Second Edition. New York: Facts On File, Inc., 2009. Bloom's Literary Reference Online. Facts On File, Inc. http://www.fofweb.com/activelink2.asp?ItemID=WE54&SID=5&iPin= Gamshrtsty0575&SingleRecord=True (accessed January 25, 2011)
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