Journal 1: Personal Response “We wear the mask”

This poem attempts to convey that everyone wears a mask for survival. The mask, a symbol for lies, acts as a shield that protects people from harm but at the same time it is a sword that can attack their own identity. Everyone at one point in their life has face the struggle of being true to oneself and being what society expects one to be based on gender, ethnicity and race. According to the poem we wear a mask for fear of not being accepted into a group and for vanity too. To the poet life is nothing but pretension since humans are so fragile to what other people may think of them. Through the literary device of assonance and metaphors the author’s ultimately conveys that since we cannot be true to ourselves then we cannot expect more from the world but lives; what you give is a reflection of what you project.
In today’s world, this poem paints the pessimistic side of what it means to live in a mainstream culture like America. We often are told that we have to be unique at home but in American culture which is influence greatly by superficialities through Hollywood we received the message that we must be what the general society accepts. This struggle creates a divided identity especially among teenagers, whom may project a different personality with friends and to the outside world than the one they have at home. Celebrities and movies influence teenagers to appear and behave in a certain way in order to be “cool.” Because American culture already has a definition of what it means to be beautiful usually, thin and blond-haired, some teenagers will go to the extreme of changing their identity, and even harming themselves, to fill that definition. In America there is a pressure to be thin that some girls have become anorexic. Wearing a mask often times makes us feel more comfortable fitting in popular culture but that may restrict us from being honest to ourselves. The poet explain that we intentionally put the mask on and we do come to feel ashamed as he describes “We smile, but, o great Christ, our cries / To thee from tortured souls arise.” Only to God we can admit our lies because at some point we come to feel guilty for the actions we take. But the shame is not as great to make people think about being their own person because the fear of harm and rejection outweigh it.