This reading of Byron’s Don Juan focuses on the perceptions which form the poem itself through Byron’s use of a persona in it. The poet’s artistic method is seen as direct reflection of the human desire for ascendancy over forces inimical to the apparent preservation of life through either appetite, eroticism or idealism as a counterforce to fear. Byron as persona-poet mirrors forth his own ironically asserted ascendancy in the figure of his anti-heroic hero Don Juan. The mask is, it would appear, the reality.