"We Wear the Mask"

I chose to reflect on the poem "We Wear the Mask" by Paul Laurence Dunbar.
First of all, this poem is referring to us, the general population, as the author uses the words "we" and "ours" throughout the entire poem. We are everywhere, anywhere that we go throughout our every day life. He is talking about the people that we encounter at the store, work, church, maybe even within our families. We are talking about every day life, at any given time. The author says that we wear a mask. This mask grins and lies for us. It hides what it beneath it. The mask is a cover for us so that we do not have to show what is beneath it. It hides our expressions, our features, and our true feelings. It can hide anything for us. And we use it, a lot, almost all of the time. When we had torn and bleeding hearts, the mask will smile for us. For vile humans with evil intentions, the mask will cover us and protect us so that nobody would know. Because our mask protects us from all of these things, we only want people to see us with our mask on.

This is meaningful because in my own personal interpretation, I see the mask as something we all do. When we are feeling sad we don't always wants people to know or to see us in that condition so it is much easier to just smile and go on about our day the best that we can. If you ask someone how they are in passing, you do not expect for someone to stop and say that they are not well, they are in fact so sad, and having a horrible day. No, most just reply with a simple "good" and move along. I believe the author is eluding to the fact that this is something we all do at times. We can do this for many different reasons, it is not always because we are sad.