Masks

Shel Silverstein was a cartoonist, illustrator, musician, songwriter, playwright, and writer. He authored several acclaimed, best-selling children’s books, including The Giving Tree (1964) and Where the Sidewalk Ends (1974). “Masks” is a poem from Every Thing On It (2011), published after Silverstein died in 1999. The volume contains poems that Silverstein didn’t publish while he was alive. Silverstein’s family members selected the poems for the volume, reading the approximately 1,500 unpublished Silverstein poems and sorting them into nos, yeses, and maybes for publication.

Like much of Silverstein’s work for children, “Masks” doesn’t hide the unsettling aspects of life. The poem confronts complex themes like personal identity, loneliness, and melancholy. Although Silverstein regularly criticized children’s literature, his work is not dissimilar from A. A. Milne, Dr. Seuss, and other canonized children’s authors who didn’t talk down to their young readers. While “Masks” isn’t Silverstein’s most famous poem, it’s not ignored by critics and readers, either.

Poet Biography

Shel Silverstein was born in Chicago on September 25, 1930. His dad, Nathan, and uncle, Jack, opened a bakery a few years before the Great Depression. Like many who lived during this era, the Silverstein family faced hard times: “Most days, the Silverstein family ate whatever Nathan could bring home from the bakery,” writes Lisa Rogak in her biography A Boy Named Shel (2007). Silverstein coped with the difficulty by reading and drawing. As a child, Silverstein liked comics and fantasy books. His mom, Helen, supported his artistic side, but Nathan wanted Silverstein to work for the bakery. After he graduated high school in 1948, Silverstein bounced around Chicago-area colleges before the United States military drafted him in 1953. While Silverstein didn’t face combat, he contributed cartoons to the military newspaper Pacific Stars and Stripes. Discharged from the army in 1955, Silverstein returned to Chicago with a creative portfolio.

In 1956, the adult magazine Playboy published Silverstein’s cartoons for the first time. Silverstein became friends with Playboy founder Hugh Hefner and stayed at the Playboy mansions in Chicago and California. As his stature increased, he branched out into other creative activities, releasing a handful of folk, country, jazz, and spoken-word albums. Some of his songs were made famous by other singers and groups. Johnny Cash turned “A Boy Named Sue” (1969) into a hit, and Dr. Hook & the Medicine Show did the same with Silverstein’s “The Cover of Rolling Stone” (1972).

In 1961, Simon & Schuster published Silverstein’s subversive alphabet book, Uncle Shelby’s ABZ Book. The work was meant for adults but read by children. A friend who wrote books for children suggested Silverstein publish a book specifically for young readers. About classic children’s literature, Silverstein believed, “The condescension is not only thick enough to walk on but absolutely destructive” (quoted in A Boy Named Shel). Setting aside his qualms, Silverstein published Lafcadio: The Lion Who Shot Back in 1963. A year later, Harper & Row published The Giving Tree, which cemented Silverstein’s reputation as a critical children’s author. The book sold well, generating both acclaim and controversy due to the fraught relationship between the boy and the tree.

A decade later, Silverstein published Where the Sidewalk Ends. As with The Giving Tree, this poetry collection produced impressive sales, acclaim, and controversy. Libraries and schools banned the book because they thought the poetry was rebellious and inappropriate for young readers. In 1981, libraries and schools tried to ban Silverstein’s poetry book A Light in the Attic for similar reasons.

Silverstein never married, but he had a son, Matthew, and a daughter, Shoshanna. On April 24, 1982, 11-year-old Shoshanna died suddenly from a brain aneurysm. Shoshanna and Silverstein were close, and her death devastated him. However, Silverstein continued publishing books for children and adults until he died of a heart attack in 1999. Every Thing On It was the third Silverstein book published posthumously. This collection of poems contains “Masks.”

Poem Text

Silverstein, Shel. “Masks.” 2011. CommonLit.

Summary

The poem was originally published with an accompanying illustration by the poet-cartoonist: The single stanza sits between two large masks, worn by comparatively small figures who, based on traditional presentations (a dress versus pants), would seem to be a girl and a boy walking away from one another. The masks vaguely resemble archetypal theater masks but are relatively expressionless. The entirety of the poem’s text is black—save for the two instances of the word “blue” (Lines 1, 5), which are printed in blue.

”Masks” opens with the poem’s speaker declaring, “She had blue skin” (Line 1). A girl—or some feminine figure—has blue skin. In Line 2, the speaker says, “And so did he” (Line 2). Now, two people—girl and boy, or feminine and masculine figures—have blue skin.

Line 3 provides further details about the boy, who, instead of walking around showing his blue skin to the world, conceals it, or “kept it hid” (Line 3). In Line 4, the speaker says that the girl feels similarly about her blue skin and, like the boy, covers it up.

The following line contains action with the verb “searched” (Line 5): Both the girl and the boy look for the color blue. Their search lasts their entire lives, or their “whole life through” (Line 6).

Blue skin is rare since neither the boy nor the girl find it in anyone else. If they had displayed their blue skin and not concealed it, their search might have been fruitful. Unfortunately, the boy and the girl choose otherwise, so they “passed right by-- / And never knew” (Lines 7-8). They encounter one another, and they presumably find what they were hunting for—another person with blue skin—but they don’t realize this because each one masks their authentic skin.