Harlem

A simile is a figure of speech in which an author makes a comparison between two unlike things. Using the words "like" or "as" confirms the similarity. The purpose is to emphasize the description...

Given the first line of the poem—the question "What happens to a dream deferred?"—it seems that the speaker is a person who has had some dream of his (or hers) deferred. To "defer" something means...

While Langston Hughes's "Harlem" does not have a specific meter or rhyme pattern, it does create a pattern, via the use of similes, to speculate on the opening line "What happens to a dream...

Since the Harlem Renaissance, Harlem, a burrow of New York City, has been tied to both the realities of oppression of black people and the expressions of black people. The title, "Harlem",...

The images created in the poem help to illuminate world of denial and the inaction of dreams. The idea of the shriveled up raisin in the blistering sun helps to expose the reader to a mental...

The poem, “Harlem,” by Langston Hughes is a warning to his readers as to what happens when one puts off or defers one’s dreams. It is motivational in nature, asking his readers to reflect on what...

Given that the last line contains the only metaphor in the poem -- all of the other comparisons that came before are similes -- and because metaphor is generally believed to be the strongest method...

Tone is generally determined by several factors. In Langston Hughes's poem "Harlem," tone can best be determined by his use of imagery. This work has a simple structure: it is a series of images...

This very famous poem, which was used as the basis of the title for the famous play, A Raisin in the Sun, asks a question and gives us a series of possible answers without ever answering that...

The poem about a "Dream Deferred, " or "Harlem," or "Montage of a Dream Deferred" represents Langston Hughes' exploration of the results of dreams that are set aside or dismissed. The poem...

Langston Hughes poem "Harlem" written in 1951 spoke of the frustration of the black people before the Civil Rights movement which began later in the decade. Segregation ran rampant throughout the...

In this poem, the speaker considers the various possible outcomes of a dream that has been delayed or put off, and he uses a series of similes followed by one, final metaphor. Because a metaphor...

Langston Hughes employs many examples of figurative language in the poem. The overwhelming use of imagery, or mental pictures, populate the poem in helping the reader understand the implications...

Word choice is also known as diction in poetry. In this poem, Hughes' diction is both simple and poetic. It is simple because he uses mostly everyday words that ordinary people would know, such as...

Hughes uses five similes and one metaphor to convey the idea that dreams which are "deferred" or delayed can hurt the dreamer as well as those who might work to put the dream off. The title,...

This is an interesting question, since Langston Hughes's "Harlem" is generally noted for its imagery, not its alliteration or rhyme. The poem does contain those things, of course, and they do...

If we look at the poem, we notice that two main literary devices are central to it: the question and the simile. A simile is a comparison that uses the words like or as. Examining the poem, we...

Langston Hughes's poem "Harlem" takes the form of a series of questions. This in itself sharpens the tone. A single question may be friendly, but a series of questions, without a pause for answers,...

The speaker of this poem is trying to answer the question: "What happens to a dream deferred?" (line 1). Deferred means delayed or withheld. Typically, if one defers something, one puts it off...

Hughes' fundamental question is one where there cannot be a direct and reductive answer. Simply put, one can only examine the possibilities and not derive a totalizing answer. This is why Hughes...

Hughes does indeed use free verse in most of his poems, as the previous poster states, but "Harlem" is at least as structured as many of his other pieces and, I believe, can be analyzed more fully...

The theme Langston Hughes's poem "Dream Deferred" shares in common with Martin Luther King Jr.'s I Have a Dream speech is the idea that, although racism shrivels and cripples humanity, it also,...

Langston Hughes' poem “Harlem” looks at the adverse, and potentially even catastrophic, effects of the lack of opportunity in some parts of American society. Rhythm is the pattern created by the...

Langston Hughes was a literary giant in American poetry. Writing during the period called the Harlem Renaissance, Hughes focused most of his poetry toward the Black American in the mid twentieth...

For the speaker in this poem, the frustration of a dream deferred is like a wound. But is it an old wound that has scarred over, as the image of the dry raisin suggests. Or is it open and...

Yes, it is certainly significant that the questions remain unanswered and that the poem ends with a question and thus with no certainties for the future. The unanswered questions are functional to...

Langston Hughes wrote this poem in 1951, when he was becoming increasingly political in his poetry and increasingly under McCartney-era scrutiny for his left-wing politics. Hughes knew Harlem in...

Formalist perspective is a way to consider writing not as a means to knowledge or discovering meaning, but instead concentrates on simply stating a position. One may definitely consider Hughes'...

The Langston Hughes poem “Harlem,” also sometimes referred to as “A Dream Deferred,” is about the potentially devastating effects of oppression. There are a number of possible critical approaches...

Langston Hughes "Harlem" (also commonly referred to by its first line, "What happens to a dream deferred?") is part of a larger group of poems published in 1951, Montage of a Dream Deferred. Like...

It is vitally important to remember that this poem is set during the Great Depression of the 1930s, a time of unprecedented want and poverty, which of course imapcted those who were looked down...

Langston Hughes’ poem “Harlem” (it appears under a number of other titles, too) was indeed written a couple of decades after the Harlem Renaissance had ended and quite rightly might be taken, in...

In stanza one, the word "dry"—in the phrase "dry up"—is used as a verb. The implication here is that a dream deferred as good as disappears, as the water in a river would disappear if the river...

The poem is a pretty despairing picture of what happens when something long hoped for and dreamed about is constantly promised but never realized. It's a raisin in the sun which dries up, a sore...

Langston Hughes uses the elements of imagery and rhetorical question to foreshadow the destructive consequences of unfulfilled dreams. Particularly, the dream in question, and the subject of his...

The speaker in "Harlem" asserts that the realization of hopes and dreams is essential to a person's well-being. Through various similes, the reader is reminded of the harm that can come when dreams...

Hughes has a consistent theme of freedom and equality in much of his poetry, and that theme is evident in these three poems. He speaks of dreams, and the common dream that he shares in these poems...

Hughes' poem, "Harlem," though written 60 years ago, is highly relevant to the Black experience today. In this poem, Hughes' speaker asks what happens to dreams that never come to fulfillment. He...

I edited your question slightly for it to make more sense, as your previous question was slightly unclear. I hope I have still captured the essence of what you wanted to ask! This famous poem by...

In Langston Hughes' poem entitled "Harlem," the "dream deferred" here describes the American Dream that was available to all white people, but not to the black man. Even when laws were changed to...

In "Harlem," Langston Hughes uses similes and a metaphor, as well as vivid and descriptive imagery, to convey the idea that forcing people to delay their dreams can lead to violence. Using a series...

Hughes's narrator uses five similes to ponder what happens to a dream deferred (deferred means put off or delayed). (A simile is a comparison of two unalike things using the words like or as.)...

The dream that Hughes refers to represents the hopes for social equality with whites that African Americans had cherished for so long but that always been frustrated. The opening question of the...

Claude McKay's "America" is a Shakespearean sonnet, composed in a stately, measured tone appropriate to the form. The poem employs several metaphors and similes to illustrate the poet's troubled...

First, the speaker asks, "What happens to a dream deferred?" By this, he seems to be asking the fate of a dream that has been put off or postponed. The poem is sort of an exploration of all the...

In the mere act of raising questions, Hughes is expressing political and social values about what it means to be of color in America of the time period. At the time of Hughes' writing, being Black...