The writings of Paul Lawrence Dunbar and W.E.B. Du Bois both reflect the internal struggle that Black Americans encounter in life but it does not limit this experience to that community. This struggle has resulted in the development of Double conscious within society overall. Dunbar and Du-Bois writings demonstrates the double conscious struggle within the Black community, how it affect us internally and our successes within society.
Taking the poem “We wear the Mask” by Paul Lawrence Dunbar displays how double consciousness is effective within the Black community and society overall. Beginning with the first lines 1-2 it reads “We wear the masks that grins and lies, it hides our cheeks and shades our eyes.” (Dunbar) Dunbar is referring to Black Americans in this poem but not limiting this to be just a Black American struggle. What he is…show more content… One ever feels his two-ness, an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two reconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder.” (W.E.B. Dubois, 694) Referencing to this Phrase ‘Double-consciousness’ defies Blacks within America and their struggle of having their own Identity vs. what they are conformed as. Du Bois uses great detail to describe the way a Black man looks at himself. He uses a various amount of metaphors and words to connect the same idea that a Black man does not have a unique definition for himself. He continues by describing that this “two-ness” is hard to control and hard to ignore or deny. For a man to have to decide which side of him he should allow to be seen within the American society. Not only does this “two-ness” set forth external yet internal struggle for Blacks within the American
