Figurative Language In Dreams By Langston Hughes

In Langston Hughes’s poem “Dreams”; Hughes uses a didactic tone to stress the importance of holding onto dreams to satisfy life’s purpose. Hughes’s uses repetition and metaphors to convey the powerful imagery that urges readers to follow their dreams in order to avoid the dismay and sorrow that follows when he let dreams go. Mr. Hughes, also utilizes personification to convey feelings and emotions that are attached to dreams.

“Dreams” is a beautiful, urgent poem that motivates individuals to chase after their dreams. For example, Hughes; uses repetition to stress this urgency in the serious tone that the poem conveys. The short structure of the poem adds another layer to this urgency. The poem is broken up into 2 stanzas with 4 lines each. Hughes’s repetition of the first line “Hold fast to dreams” in each stanza alerts the reader to quickly capture one’s dreams before it slips through the cracks of our fingers. It forces the

The use of personification that Hughes’s gives to the word “Dreams” a conative meaning; so that each individual reader has a different feeling, or emotion attached to the poem. Thus, inspiring readers to go and achieve their dreams. Hughes’s first personifies dreams; giving dreams the ability to die “For is dreams die” and “For when dreams go”; symbolizing that dreams can abandon us if we don’t hold onto them. The personification that Langston Hughes uses in these two lines help reassure the strong, firm and powerful tone throughout the poem.

Finally, the use of the strong metaphors in the poem “Dreams” makes it an easy, understandable and power poem, filled with imagery to support the theme that one must hold onto dreams for without dreams we have nothing. Hughes uses the metaphors to compare dreams to heart break and