Imagery in A Dream Deferred Essay

Everyone in the world has dreams, some come true and others stay dreams forever. In the poem A Dream Deferred, Langston Hughes expresses his facts of a dream being put on hold, and a dream being seized or even postponed to come true. The author uses a lot of imagery during this poem to express his point, He does this to show the reader how he feels about a person putting their dreams off until later. The way he writes certain things in this poem should also show his values as a person and how he was taught as a child.

At the beginning of the poem, Hughes mentions Does it (the dream) dry up like a raisin in the sun? meaning that the dream dries up and withers after so long while waiting on it to come true. This image should encourage the reader to picture a perfectly round and plump grape that sits in the sun ready to be eaten, but waits too long only to go bad and dry out in the sun because no one made it happen. This is opposed to the dream, sitting ready to be carried out, but it gets put behind and forgot because no one made it happen. Asking the reader this question was a good way to get the readers mind going and thinking about the subject of the poem.

The second example of imagery Hughes uses was like an open wound. He asks Or festers like a soreand then run? this question is asked to help the reader think about something that has not been taken care of. If a dream that a person has is not being fulfilled and handled the way it should, so that it can be able to manifest, then it will go bad and wont be healthy enough to even get carried out. This even goes into how a sore that doesnt heals gets worse, in that same way, a dream gets worse and the feeling of making it happen gets worse also. When he goes on to say that it runs put the reader in the mind of an ugly sore that nobody wants to look at or even think about. If a person has a dream that is difficult to make come true and it is their own fault that is cant happen, the dream becomes ugly and hard to even think about.

Another piece of imagery that Langston Hughes uses is when he states Maybe it just sags like a heavy load. This makes a person think of saggy breast on an old woman or even saggy wrinkly skin on old people. This puts the reader in the mind of an old dream that is just old and saggy. Maybe it could even be talking about how things become burdens because its on a persons mind so much. If a person hold something on their heart too long, it can become a heavy load and weigh them down from carrying out any other dreams as well, only because they couldnt get the first one done.

Even though this poem is short, it has a lot of meaning and different points and views. What happens to a dream deferred? Hughes tells it all in this poem. He expresses his views and beliefs to show the reader that having dreams and not fulfilling them can end up in a mess or does it explode? a deferred dream is like a bomb, destroying everything that matters in life.