The Mask Symbol in Call Us What We Carry: Vulnerability, Perception, and Care

What the Mask Literally Is

In Amanda Gorman’s Call Us What We Carry, the mask first appears as a familiar object from the COVID-19 pandemic: a face covering worn to slow the spread of the virus. Gorman does not treat it as a mere accessory; she reimagines the mask as a charged symbol that carries multiple, sometimes contradictory meanings. Across the collection, the mask is both a practical tool and a metaphorical lens through which the speaker explores vulnerability, perception, care, and social division.

Where the Mask Recurs

In “There’s No Power Like Home”

The first extended treatment of the mask appears in Chapter 8. The speaker describes the mask as “around our ear / Hung itself into the year,” suggesting how the object became a permanent fixture of daily life during lockdown. Removing the mask is compared to “tearing it off like a bandage, / Like something that gauzed / The great gape of our mouth.” Here the mask is a covering that both protects and conceals a wound. But the poem immediately complicates this image: “Even faceless, a smile can still / Scale up our cheeks, / Bone by bone, / Our eyes crinkling.” Gorman redefines the mask as “no veil, but a view,” concluding that identity is formed through what we perceive in others. The mask becomes an aperture rather than a barrier.

In “War: What, Is It Good?”

In Chapter 47, the mask takes on a different meaning. Gorman writes: “This mask is our medal of honor. / It has our war written all over it.” By linking the mask to military medals, she transforms a humble piece of cloth or paper into a badge of courage earned through collective survival. The poem draws a parallel between pandemic restrictions and wartime communication, showing how the mask, like a uniform, marks participation in a shared struggle. The mask here also signals the privilege (or lack thereof) of refusing to wear it. Later, in the erasure poem “_ _ _ _ _ [Gated]” (Chapter 52), Gorman critiques those who “not wear the mask that would save you, for that would mean taking off one’s privilege.” The mask becomes a litmus test for solidarity and a measure of how power operates.

In “Please”

The three-line poem “Please” (Chapter 3) uses brackets to create verbal erasures: “PLEASE / ensure you maintain [ ] yourself & others & [ ] face.” The missing word “mask” is never spoken, but the brackets signal what has been hollowed out or left unsaid. This technique connects the physical mask to a broader theme of erasure and loss that runs through the collection. The mask, in this context, is something that both covers and points to an absence—whether of a loved one, a history, or a future.

In Other Contexts

Though not always named directly, the mask appears implicitly in poems about pandemic isolation, such as “School’s Out” and “What We Did in the Time Being,” where faces become “Zoombies” on screens. In each recurrence, the mask is never just a piece of fabric; it carries the weight of a historic moment.

How the Mask’s Meaning Changes

Gorman allows the mask to evolve across the book. Its primary meanings cluster around four themes:

1. Vulnerability and Care. Initially the mask is a necessary protection, something that “gauzed the great gape of our mouth.” It exposes the body’s fragility while demonstrating active care for others.

2. Perception and Connection. In “There’s No Power Like Home,” the mask is a view, not a veil. It redirects attention to the eyes and to the small beauties of domestic life—a dog, a squirrel, a joke. The mask reshapes how the speaker sees the world and how she is seen.

3. Honor and Struggle. In “War: What, Is It Good?,” the mask becomes a medal of honor that testifies to having lived through a crisis. It functions like a veteran’s uniform, encoding shared war and sacrifice.

4. Privilege and Division. The poem “_ _ _ _ _ [Gated]” exposes the mask as a tool of social distinction. For groups accustomed to power, wearing a mask means surrendering privilege. Refusing the mask becomes an act of “poisonous pride”—a choice that carries deadly consequences.

Connections to Characters and Themes

The mask is worn by the collective speaker who speaks as “we” throughout the collection. This speaker represents a generation that lived through the pandemic, and the mask is a universal possession that binds them together. Because the speaker is a composite of many voices, the mask symbol does not belong to any one individual; it is a shared artifact of experience.

Thematically, the mask connects deeply to grief and trauma. The mask covers a wound; its removal can expose pain. It also links to collective memory and erasure through the brackets in “Please” and the idea of erasure poems that seek “the bodies, the truth, the voices that have always existed but have been exiled from history” (as Gorman writes in the prefatory note to “Erasure”). The mask both hides and preserves what is underneath.

The symbol also advances resilience and healing by showing how people adapt: they find ways to smile through a mask, to connect across distance. In unity and fellowship, wearing the mask becomes a pact—a voluntary agreement to protect one another. Gorman even redefines peace as a pact, writing that “harmony / Is a tomorrow we agree on” (Chapter 47). The mask is a daily enactment of that agreement.

Finally, the mask resonates with hope and transformation. In the closing poem “What We Carry” (Chapter 71), the speaker declares, “We have recalled how to touch each other / & how to trust all that is good & all right.” The mask, once a barrier, becomes a means of rediscovering connection.

Characters who appear in the collection—such as Selma Epp, Roy Underwood Plummer, Ida B. Wells-Barnett, the Donohue family, and the lost and the dead—are not directly depicted wearing a mask. However, the mask symbolism amplifies the book’s broader themes of carrying history, surviving trauma, and demanding recognition. The mask, like the erasure poems, seeks to expose what has been hidden: the labor of Black soldiers, the courage of activists, the grief of families.

Four Study Questions with Answers

1. How does Gorman transform the mask from a physical object into a symbol in Call Us What We Carry?
Answer: Gorman uses concrete imagery from the pandemic (the elastic loops, the feeling of removal) to root the mask in lived experience. She then recontextualizes it through metaphor: it becomes a bandage covering a wound, a view that reshapes identity, a medal of honor, and a test of privilege. Each recurrence adds a layer, so the mask accumulates meaning without losing its physical reality.

2. What does the mask reveal about privilege and inequality in the collection?
Answer: In “_ _ _ _ _ [Gated],” Gorman explicitly links refusal to wear a mask to the maintenance of white privilege. For groups historically forced to wear masks of compliance (“keeping one’s face” in public), the pandemic mask becomes a rare instance where the powerful are asked to sacrifice comfort. Their refusal exposes how “poisonous pride” overrides collective survival.

3. How does the mask connect to the theme of erasure in the book?
Answer: The brackets in “Please” enact a literal erasure of the word “mask” and the face it covers. This technique mirrors the larger erasure poems later in the collection, where Gorman “erase[s] to find” hidden histories. The mask becomes a symbol of what is lost (a smile, a year, a loved one) and what must be recovered.

4. In what ways does the mask represent both isolation and connection?
Answer: Physically, the mask separates faces and muffles speech, reinforcing social distance. Yet Gorman argues that the mask can also be a view: we see each other more clearly through the eyes, and we perform care by wearing it. In “War: What, Is It Good?,” the mask as “medal of honor” ties individual experience to collective memory. The mask isolates the body but connects the community.