1. Do you sometimes feel that you have to “wear” more than one face
Do you sometimes feel that you have to “wear” more than one face? Are you one person at home, another at school, and yet another when you are out with friends?

2. Sketch It!
Draw pictures showing different faces you might “wear” in different situations.

3. Paul Laurence Dunbar
B. June 27, 1872
D. February 9, 1906

4. The Poet’s Twin Masks
Paul Laurence Dunbar wrote two kinds of poetry. Although he was known and loved for his sentimental verse, written in dialect, about an idyllic, pastoral, pre-Civil War plantation life, he has sometimes been criticized for this work and for failing to confront the issues of racial stereotypes and discrimination. However, Dunbar also produced poems in Standard English that meditate on love, nature, or death; express pride in African Americans; or lament thwarted efforts to live and create freely.

5. Background He was the son of a slave. Born in Dayton, Ohio
Both of his parents had escaped from slavery and brought him up with the love for poetry and history.
 Dunbar began to write stories and verse when still a child and was president of his high school's literary society.
His first published work came, at age 16, in a newspaper put out by his high- school friends, Wilbur and Orville Wright (the famous Wright brothers).

6. Background
He was the first African American to achieve national recognition for his writing.
He was intimately connected with Frederick Douglass and Booker T. Washington and was honored with a ceremonial sword by President Theodore Roosevelt.
His work is known for its colorful language and use of dialect, and a conversational tone, with a brilliant rhetorical structure.
He was later diagnosed with tuberculosis in 1900, and moved to Colorado with his wife, he died at age thirty-three on February 9,

7. Time period background
Post Civil War, and Reconstruction
In 1865, the 13th amendment granted freedom for all slaves
African Americans had gained their freedom, but they were still fighting for equality.
Organizations like the Ku Klux Klan were formed to oppress the African Americans, and to prove that white men were superior.
As more and more African American were becoming educated, they realized that they could fight for equal rights, and that they had a say in what was going on in the country.

8. Douglass
What does the speaker tell Douglass in the first two lines of the poem?
Summarize what the speaker tells Douglass about the present time. How does the present compare with Douglass’s time? Explain.
What does the speaker wish that Douglass could do? What does this wish seem to suggest about the problems of the present?
What extended metaphor does the speaker use? Evaluate how well this metaphor represents the struggle the speaker is describing.
Do you think the theme, or central message, of the poem is relevant today? Why or why not?
What situation or problem is presented in the first stanza of “Douglass”?
What resolution is wished for in the second stanza?

9. We Wear the mask
Style- To create rhyme and meter, many poets use inverted sentences–sentences that do not use the usual subject-predicate-direct object word order.
Ex: Restate line 3 in standard word order.
We pay this debt to human guile.

10. We wear the mask What words or phrases are repeated in the poem?
What is the effect of this repetition?
What words does the speaker use to describe the mask? Who wears the mask, and why must it be worn?
What reality is hidden behind the mask? What words and images describe that reality?
Why do you think Dunbar wrote this poem in Standard English rather than in dialect? How does this choice reinforce the speaker’s theme?