Harlem Langston Hughes Analysis

The poem “Harlem” by Langston Hughes is one of my favorite poems. The poem was written in 1951. The reason why it is my favorite poem is because it was written during the beginning of the civil rights movement and it reflects the hardships that many Africans Americans were facing during that time period. The language of “Harlem” is very down to earth. The narrator asks whether a dream becomes a “dried up fruit, or a sweet that crusts and sugar over, and he also asks whether the dream sags or explodes. All of these tropes represents the frustration of Americans during that time period. While I was reading the poem, I found many themes and symbolism that brought me to the meaning of the poem such as: dreams being put to a hold and fate.
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He negatively questions all different possible aspects of the fate of those forgotten dreams. For instances, he uses “fester”, “stink”, “crust”, “heavy load” and “explode” which in my opinion are said in a negative tone. By doing this, Hughes suggest that even dreams not achieved due to societal pressure to survive will burden their dreamers until eventual end. He questions how these dreams changes as time go on. He also uses a patterns in his rhetorical questions chronologically describing the different fates. This extends to suggest that even if civil rights be protected in America and racism is abolish, the dreams of those oppressed by it will not vanish, but remain. In this way, he suggest that dreams simultaneously are and are not transient; they can change with a person and progress through a pattern of changes which all forgotten dreams suffer, but they also will never simply vanish with time until they are

For example, “fester like a soar and then run”(Hughes)? This means that if a soar does not heal properly it will fester which means it will cause an infection and irritation which represents a dream deferred is iratting. “Does it stink like rotten meat”(Hughes pg )? Rotten meat is gross and unwanted. A goal that is not realize or met in timely fashion will decay because it dies. Some this people think this line is positive, but it is not. The poetic line i’m referring to is “ or crust and sugar over like a syrupy sweet”(Hughes)? Think of the crusty accumulation on top of an unused bottle of syrup and it can become of unuseable. Lack of use has formed the crust and it’s no longer useful. A dream force to sit idle hardens and it’s no longer useful. Simile number five says, “maybe it sags like a heavy load”(Hughes pg). When you’re carrying a heavy load it slouches. Maybe the goal just sags like carrying something heavy. When a dream is not completed it weighs on someone’s mind so much that it’s too heavy to bear and it just sags like a heavy load. One might use “what have might been” or “if only. The last stanza “or does it explode”(Hughes pg ) returns to a question again in form of a metaphor of an explosion. Explosions can cause great destruction. If a person’s dream is postponed, they lose all hope and explodes; and destroys anything around them or they might end up hurting themselves. The