Poet writers use various poetic devices in their poetry to embellish the poem and engage the reader by making the writing more interesting. Paul Laurence Dunbar was one of the first black American poets to be well recognized in his time. He helped cover the path of the Harlem Renaissance artist. Dunbar's poem "We Wear The Mask" was published in 1896, which is when Plessy vs. Ferguson took place, which the law required racial segregation in public facilities in the belief of separate but equal. Dunbar's life experiences motivated him to write poetry, especially those previously mentioned. This poem has different themes such as suffering and lies, but most importantly, it has a great poetic device that makes the poem more interesting to the reader. Many poems and literary pieces address the different social issues that we can still experience in today's worlds. “We Wear The Mask” by Paul Laurence Dunbar focuses on talking about how we wear masks that hide our true feelings. Furthermore, the speaker covers up in the poem all the things that the mask hides in the world so as not to see all the pain and suffering that people have behind the mask. The mask we wear does us no favors, rather, it makes us suffer to make others around us happy. The theme "No, let them only see us, while / we wear the mask". (8-9) this shows how the mask is used by humans so that the world instead of seeing the truth sees lies, the truth is harder for us to accept, so people become ignorant of who they really are. Also, it depends on the environment we are in, for example if we are at work we try to impress the managers probably for a promotion or something and at school we also wear a different mask to impress the teacher and other people around