Compare And Contrast We Wear The Mask And Richard Cory

“We Wear the Mask” by Paul Laurence Dunbar and “Richard Cory” by Edwin Arlington Robinson are two poems that depict how many people hide their feelings from others. The two poems are similar in theme, but are told from different points of view and differ in plot.

In “Richard Cory”, the main character, Richard Cory, is a man who comes across as perfect to others: a gentleman, clean, slim, educated. Richard Cory was admired by all and was the man whom everyone desired to be. Those who had admired him came from a lower class than him and looked up to him as being superior. However, despite Cory’s perfectness that was displayed to others, one night Cory did the unpredictable and shot himself in the head. Paul Laurence Dunbar was one of the first

influential African American poets and wrote the poem “We Wear the Mask” about the suffering of the African American people. The African American people chose to hide their pain behind masks because they believed the world shouldn’t see their pain, they should see them as happy people.
Arlington uses irony in “Cory” to address the theme of the poem.

The irony in the poem portrays the theme that looks can be very deceiving. Richard Cory was the perfect man, or so it seemed. No one saw what was going on underneath his perfect disguise. In the beginning of the poem we learn that Richard Cory is perfect and rich. Through his suicide, we learn that even Cory, a perfect man, was not as content as he seemed to others. The common people had a distorted view of Cory. They thought Cory was happy because he was wealthy and came across as perfect when in reality, he had faults and suffered. His appearance was deceiving as he hid his suffering with a mask- his looks, his riches, and the way he kept himself. Since he appeared to be of a higher class and richer than the common people, it would seem as though he would have no problems. Arlington emphasized how Corey had everything with his use of repetitiveness using “And” at the beginning of each line describing Cory’s characteristics. The common people judged Richard Cory based on what they saw, assuming he had the perfect life with everything he had, rather than who he was as a person. In “Cory”, there is no mention of Cory’s life on a personal level. The moral of this is not to judge a person by their looks, but rather who they really are because who they really are can be

masked.
Dunbar’s poem “We Wear the Mask” is a poem of mystery that reveals the African Americans’ feelings during the time when this poem was written. The poem is a paradox because it could be considered a mask. To figure out that “Mask” was written regarding racial conflicts, knowledge beneath the poem was needed. The author of the poem, Dunbar, was an African American and he wrote this poem from the point of view of himself and his people, African Americans. The title “Mask” is a paradox because the poem is ‘wearing a mask’ in a way that the reader does not know what this poem is really about nor who exactly the point of view is from. The reader just knows that the people in the poem are experiencing suffering and feel the need to hide that suffering from the world by wearing masks of happiness. The repetitive use of the line “we wear the mask” emphasizes how determined the people were to hide their true emotions and tortured souls with happiness. Throughout the poem, Dunbar uses hyperboles such as “with torn and bleeding hearts we smile” to emphasize how much the people really suffered and their motivation to hide their true feelings with a happy smile. The theme of the poem is many people feel the need to and do hide their pain with a mask. Humans do not want each other to see the suffering they are enduring so instead they choose to wear a mask and smile to act like nothing is bothering them, and hiding their pain from the world.