Realisn in the Poems of Paul Laurence Dunbar

I was absolutely and completely taken in by Paul Laurence Dunbar's poem "We Wear the Mask." It stands as a wonderful example of Realism in my opinion. Realism is all about exposing things as they truly are (Werlock). While in Romanticism things were always displayed on the more sunny side and in Dark Romanticism things were described in the most grotesque way possible, Realism does its best to display things as they truly are. In the same way, Rationalism tried to approach life from a purely scientific and analytical standpoint and ignore the presence of emotion and a belief system in our lives. Realism, however, combines the aforementioned genres into a sort of "happy medium" genre that allows room for both facts and emotions (Werlock).

Sometimes you will be reading something and all the sudden you come across a line that is particularly striking to you. It is almost as though you say "Oh my goodness, that is exactly like me! I thought perhaps I was the only one who felt this way!" For some, these occurrences are fairly regular, but for others these events only happen rarely. For me, I tend to find most works that I come across displaying ideas that are rather obvious. Rarely do I come across something that just smacks me across the face with the realness of it. In my opinion, this feeling that one gets when they experience this kind of shared belief with another person was the entire purpose of Realism. The purpose of Realism was to say something that is real and true and applies to many different people (Werlock).

"We Wear the Mask" was one such work for me. On the one hand, the idea is rather obvious. Virtually everyone knows that each person hides a part of themselves in some way from everyone else around them, which is the main idea of the poem (Dunbar, "We"). However, the poem then goes on to discuss how while we try so very hard to hide our hardships from the world, we have no problem dumping them all on God and hiding from him the happy mask and making him be responsible for all the pain we feel (Dunbar, "We"). I cannot help but realize how incredibly sad and true this is. So often we hide our pain and sadness from the world and yet we pin the shortcomings of the world upon our creator who is the one that gave us the good things. We create the bad things for ourselves.

The other poem I read by Paul Laurence Dunbar was "Douglass," a poem about Frederick Douglass. This poem is purely a wistful one wishing that Frederick Douglass were still alive and could therefore guide them through the dark world where honor is no longer an accepted practice (Dunbar, "Douglass"). This reflects Realism by depicting the world as a dark place that the author feels that it is. It also displays the Realism characteristic of telling things like they are and not sugarcoating anything in order to make it seem better, which was a common practice in the Romanticism era (Dunbar, "Douglass").

Dunbar, Paul Laurence. "Douglass." Glencoe American Literature. comp. Wilhelm, Jeffery. McGraw Hill. Columbus, OH. 2009. pg. 570.

Dunbar, Paul Laurence. "We Wear the Mask." Glencoe American Literature. comp. Wilhelm, Jeffery. McGraw Hill. Columbus, OH. 2009. pg. 571.

Werlock, Abby H. P. "realism." The Facts On File Companion to the American Short Story, Second Edition. New York: Facts On File, Inc., 2009. Bloom's Literary Reference Online. Facts On File, Inc. Feb 13, 2011.