Elements of Poetry: Order for Mask

Speaker: The Speaker is woman portraying three different roles (SISTER, DAUGHTER and LOVER) Audience: The maker of the masks is the audience.

Content: The poem is all about a woman who is playing three roles. She shapes her behavior, action and personality in accordance to the needs of the men in her life. In our opinion this degrades the status of the woman as it reduces her whole being to mere instruments that satisfies and pleases men’s needs and wants.

Furthermore, this conclusion is compensated by the other fact that poem is trying to imply. It also shows that the woman, through her ability to make the men in her life see and believe what she wants them to, in other words she can manipulate what she wants the men in her life to believe what she is through that “mask”. Theme: We believe that the main idea of the story is about women in the society. It’s about what women do to satisfy the needs of the people around them.

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Shape and Form: The poem is a free verse. It does not follow a pattern. Mood or Tone: In each role she partakes it has a different mood. When she played the role of a sister she felt anger that is why she doesn’t want to be like him. When she was playing the role of a daughter her mood is calm or somewhat pure to match the things that her father wants her to be – pure, innocent and chaste, leading him to believe that she is the perfect daughter.

Lastly when she is portraying the role of a lover her mood is a mixture of hatred and love, passion and disgust because her lover had raised his hand on her that left a mark so that’s where the hatred and disgust comes from yet she is still in love and pure of passion with that man because she still wants to be beautiful and presentable in his presence.

Imagery: The poet wants us to imagine the roles that women play in our everyday life and what they to satisfy our needs and wants. Diction: The poet chose to express the woman identity by describing her when she wears the masks in the presence of each man in her life. Figurative Language: Allusion

References

• Adolescence by Adrienne Su | Poetry Foundation
• How to Be Perfect by Ron Padgett | Poetry Foundation
• Lenten Song by Phillis Levin | Poetry Magazine
• Reclaiming the Masks: Poetic Personae in Adrienne Rich and Audre Lorde - Project MUSE