But notice the speaker says "human guile," which again suggests that the poem can be applied to not just the black American struggle but also the general human struggle.Line 3 tells us that the people wearing these masks owe it all to "human guile." Fancy word check: "guile" simply means a sort of deceitfulness, not being real.
This debt we pay to human guile With torn and bleeding hearts we smile,
WE WEAR THE MASK WINDOWS
"Cheeks" often indicate how we're feeling (think of blushing) and "eyes" are thought to be the windows to our soul. There's some symbolism then in line 2 that's getting at the essence of our humanity and the way we express (or don't express) our true feelings.In line 2 the people wearing them are "shad eyes" (some figurative language here), which suggests they can't even "see" clearly and likewise can't be seen by others.What else could they represent? Check out our " Symbols, Imagery, Wordplay" section for some ideas. We hide behind them for different reasons, but here we notice that these masks aren't just for dress-up. We know that masks are often used as symbols for disguises and deception.Now that we have the technical parts out of the way, let's consider some of the symbolism and figurative language we see in these lines.The couplet we get here gives us our first rhyme: "lies" and "eyes." Again, check out " Form and Meter" for more on this kind of stuff. The poem is also composed as a rondeau, meaning it's got 15 lines with only two repeating rhymes and a refrain (repeating line, or lines, of verse-like a chorus). Spoiler alert (only because we just have to point a few things out).Hop on over to " Form and Meter" for all those details.) (Don't sweat about the crazy poetry terms too much. In this case we're looking at iambic tetrameter, which means we have unstressed and then stressed syllables occurring four times in each line. So you know what that means, Shmoopers: it's a metered poem.By the way, these lines rhyme, right? And they kind of have a daDUM daDUM thing going on, too.But, since we're not sure who exactly that "we" is referring to, we can assume it more specifically refers to black Americans of the time, since Dunbar was an early pioneer of the Harlem Renaissance that came later in the 1920s.Notice too the use of "we," which invites the reader to imagine himself as part of the poem's subject, making the meaning more universal.We notice that he's getting right to the point instead of building up to it, so there's no question as to what this poem is driving at: we wear disguises that look nice ("grins"), but which are actually nothing but lies.The speaker opens with the title of the poem, so we know this idea of wearing masks is mighty important since we've heard it twice already (once in the title and now in line 1).We wear the mask that grins and lies, It hides our cheeks and shades our eyes,.
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