USA HISTORY

Detailed explanation-1: -More fancy words: “myriad” means having lots of something, too many to count even. And “subtleties” simply refer to things that come across as subtle, gentle, less obvious. The word “mouth” is not the thing you eat with, but rather is being used here as a verb, like talk.

Detailed explanation-2: -The poem is about the experiences of Black individuals in the United States in the time following the Civil War. The hiding of one’s feelings behind a mask is an instance of deceitfulness. The speaker and his audience are deceiving the world by denying them the knowledge of their truths.

Detailed explanation-3: -In the poem “We Wear the Mask, ” Paul Laurence Dunbar is using irony to express the idea that African-Americans are putting on a false face (the “mask”) to the rest of the world. The irony is in the fact that they appear to be happy, because of the mask, but in reality they are not.