Masks

Fiction | Poem | Middle Grade | Published in 2011

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Summary

Background

Poem Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Literary Devices

Themes

The Link Between Sadness, Uniqueness, and Individuality

One critical theme of “Masks” relates to the color blue. The word appears twice in the poem. The boy and girl have “blue skin” (Line 1) and “searched for blue” (Line 5) their whole lives. Blue could relate to sadness, since a person who feels blue or has the blues isn’t happy. In Bessie Smith’s blues song “Haunted House Blues” (1924), the singer (or, one could say, the speaker of the song) is not happy about her living situation and how it reminds her of the men in her life. In “Blue” (2003) by the country singer LeAnn Rimes, the singer is lonesome and blue over someone who isn’t lonesome and blue over her. In “Masks,” the girl and boy don’t express their blues but keep them hidden. The poem tackles the theme of sadness and the difficulty of sharing downcast feelings. It’s easier to go through life repressing disquieting feelings than sharing them with the world. A person can go their entire life feeling gloomy and never publicize it. They might meet someone as doleful as they are and not know it because the other person, too, is concealing their heavy heart.

Sadness slides into the theme of uniqueness and individuality. A person might feel sad because they have an exceptional intuition or a singular viewpoint. They tend to feel things that the majority don’t. In Maggie Nelson’s meditation on the color blue, Bluets (2009), she wonders, “Is to be in love with blue, then, to be in love with a disturbance?” Unique people and staunch individuals tend to disturb the status quo. Since they don’t go with the flow or follow the crowd, they’re troublesome, a bother, or disruptive. Perhaps the boy and girl hide their blue skin not because they’re sad but because they’re unique, and they don’t want the spotlight that such uniqueness draws.

Silverstein’s personal life enhances the theme of uniqueness, individuality, and sadness in “Masks.” Silverstein expressed his distinct character through his style and by deliberately choosing disturbing author photos for his books. In A Boy Named Shel, Rogak describes Silverstein as a “bald-headed, full-bearded man dressed in a pirate shirt, running shorts, and a grungy leather jacket.” At the same time, Silverstein felt painfully like he was missing out on something or someone.

Wholeness Versus Absence

“Masks” tackles the theme of wholeness and absence. One way to read the poem is to think about how the boy and the girl are missing something. There’s an emptiness that propels them to search for blue. They hide their blue skin from the world, so they feel its absence and loss—yet they remain aware that they have blue skin, so they look for another blue-skinned person. Since the only other “blue” person hides their skin, the absence remains. The boy and girl spend their entire lives searching, only to be unaware when they finally cross paths with their counterpart.

While the boy and the girl don’t form a connection, this isn’t automatically a failure. In Silverstein’s work, incompleteness has its pluses. The first poem in Every Thing On It, “Years From Now,” deals with absence: The speaker concedes that they can’t see the reader’s face since they’re not with the reader, yet, somehow, they can hear the reader laughing. Absence doesn’t preclude joy. Every Thing On It, includes another poem, “Apple With One Bite Missing.” As with the boy and the girl in “Masks,” the apple is missing something: “This apple’s giving me the blues,” says the speaker. The apple is incomplete because it’s “missing just one bite,” but the absent bite creates a presence since the speaker can “safely guarantee / That there’s half a worm inside it.”

Likewise, presence is not always positive. The apple would be better off if the worm weren’t around. Read alongside “Masks,” “Apple With One Bite Missing” highlights the complexity of the theme of wholeness versus absence. Maybe the boy and girl aren’t supposed to find one another. Perhaps there is some unsaid circumstance preventing their union. Additionally, the characters may not be truly apart: They’re joined together by the illustration, the masks they’re holding up, and by their respective searches. The boy and the girl did quite a bit together, they just weren’t aware of it.

Masking and Repression

The title “Masks” implies masking as a significant theme, yet the poem never mentions masks. If not for the title and the accompanying illustration of two forlorn masks, the theme might not come up at all.

A mask hides something; a person wears a mask to hide their face. They don’t want to expose their true identity, so they cover it with a mask. On Halloween and at costume parties, people tend to wear masks so they can be someone else for a bit. Maybe the boy and girl hide their blue skin because they want to be someone else—people without blue skin. They want to blend in and not be different.

Masking can be akin to disguising or repressing. If the boy and the girl thoroughly wanted to be someone else, they likely wouldn’t be trying to find another individual with blue skin. The boy and the girl are concealing their true color while, at the same time, hoping to find someone with that color. As with the other key themes in “Masks,” masking is complex and tricky. Sometimes, people want to display who they are, but they need someone to encourage them to take off the mask.

The poem’s puzzling tone provides no tidy conclusion to the theme of masking and repression. As the boy and the girl remain active—they “searched for blue” (Line 5)—the masking isn’t completely debilitating. Since the two characters “never knew” (Line 8) that they crossed paths, maybe they’re less disappointed than if they had known that someone else in the world had blue skin, too.