A Dream In Langston Hughes's 'Harlem'

What happens to a dream that you once wanted to pursue with all of your might, so passionately and eagerly, but then realize how daunting it can be, and let the dream slowly wither away, letting the remnants build over time until it suddenly collapses? It is this point exactly that Langston Hughes illustrates in his poem “Harlem.” While this poem appears very short to the ordinary reader’s eye, the few words written on the page in reality contain a variety of hidden meanings. One never ponders what casting aside a dream appears as, however Hughes’ choice of words illuminates just that. In his poem “Harlem”, Hughes uses diction, imagery, and a slow rhythm to convey to the reader how a dream placed to the side leads to desires that are never achieved. Throughout his poem, Hughes uses diction in order to

The phrase “raisin in the sun” figuratively depicts our dreams as something that becomes very crinkled or hard surfaced instead of something that remains smooth or soft, leaving one to assume that our dreams are not as thought out as one would believe. Hughes proceeds to say that our dreams “fester like a sore”; in other words, we pick at our dreams as if they were a sore in the attempts of keeping them at bay for a little while. However, no matter how hard we pretend of the nonexistence, the pestering becomes more likely to exist as a constant reality within our minds. Another way Hughes uses his imagery to illustrate how dreams appear to us is when he describes them to be “like a heavy load.” Depicting dreams as a “heavy load” allows the reader to imagine dreams as if dreams were a physical object that holds them back in their lives and allows them to advance no further than where they currently stand. The dreams we have can “crust and sugar over” as Hughes writes, hinting at the possibility that our dreams slowly harden over time as we put them off without aspiring to achieve