Rhetorical Devices Of `` We Wear The Mask `` And `` Harlem ``

In literature, rhetorical devices are primarily used to convey a particular feeling or action to the reader. Through the use of rhetorical devices such as imagery, description, and metaphorical allusion, the author gives the reader the ability to connect with the text on a more intimate level that otherwise would not have been achieved without the use of them. Subsequently, Harlem Renaissance writers such as Paul Lawrence Dunbar and Langston Hughes employed the rhetorical devices of imagery, description and metaphorical allusion to convey the egregious realities of the black experience in the United States during the early twentieth century. In writings such as, â€Å"We Wear the Mask† by Paul Lawrence Dunbar and â€Å"Harlem† by Langston Hughes, the use of rhetorical devices gives each writer the ability to provide commentary on the social, economic, and political circumstances that African-Americans faced in inner-city Harlem during the turn of the twentieth century. In â€Å"We Wear the Mask†, Dunbar primarily employs the rhetorical device of metaphorical allusion to give the reader a sense of how African-Americans navigated socially in a traditionally white supremacist, patriarchal society. He begins his poem, with â€Å"We wear the mask that grins and lies, it hides are cheeks and shades our eyes† (Dunbar, â€Å"We Wear the Mask†). Here, he employs the use of the mask to elaborate on the â€Å"double-consciousness† that African-Americans had to exhibit in order to function during that tumultuous