ot materialize. Then goes on “Does it dry up/like a raisin in the sun”, drawing the line that a dream loses its vitality after it is deferred for so long just as a grape drying after sitting in the sun. The next symbol is the dream as a wound that is not healing. Since he then asks “or [does the dream] fester like a sore-/and then run?” This is more grotesque to picture than a drying raisin. It gives the audience a more inflamed emotion as the resentment towards the deferring dreams continues. Just as an untreated sore will not heal, rather become more infected; a deferred dream will not diminish, it intensifies. As a wound worsens, it will eventually start to smell. Hughes compares this to rotten meat. This image forms the idea that postponed dreams will bring out the worst in people. As “meat” is not explicitly stated as lunch meat, it can also be inferred that the speaker is talking about flesh or “meat” of a human.
Meanwhile the poem’s body examines further
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Such as grapes that sit out in the sun for too long dries into a raisin; meat goes rotten if it is not refrigerated; sores fester if they are not tended to and properly bandaged. Within this imagery, a dream deferred is something that has been left out too long and not nursed. The imagery arouses the senses of the audience. As a result, gives them a better insight on the message the poem is conveying. The imagery does a successful job of showing rather than telling what the speaker is trying to portray. Dreams, if not handled properly will not just vanish into thin air. Instead, they would sit in the back of the mind of an individual to the point where it becomes wounded, worn out, and unappealing. And as a dream becomes unappealing, there is a lack of hope in the dream. The belief in the dream would lessen as the gravity in the dream will heighten. Just as the speaker explains through the dream festering until it