In "The Slave's Dream" the poetic speaker is not the poet himself that narrates and observes the dream of the slave. The story is about a slave tired from picking rice lays down and dreams about himself in his native land of Africa. He imagines himself as a king with his wife and children affectionately touching him. Then he rides on his horse freely along the Niger bank where he imagines the scenery of animals and nature like things where everything runs wild and free. He is then awoken by the slave driver's whip but does not feel the pain since he is already dead. Henry Longfellow uses poetic elements such as the style and rhyme that told the story better a prose would. he also uses poetry to show the racial injustice of slavery and how it takes away man's innate gift …show more content…
There is the use of consonant alliteration, the repetition of consonant sounds not necessarily at the beginning of each word. Also the use of assonance, which is the repetition of vowel sounds usually close together. It is used particularly with the letter a and gives more meaning to the letter by it's frequency in the poem. The poem with the sounds also emphasizes black pride with the constant repetition and statement of "I am Black". The sounds give the poem the effect of a man overcoming racial oppression with the declaration and self-respect of his race. Hart Crane uses both symbolic devices of synedoche and metonymy. The synedoche substitutes a part for a whole while the metonymy substitutes for an object of idea. The world's closed door suggests the racial bias and prejudgment put on the black man not allowing him to leave this "cellar" of social injustice . Aesop is alluded as a symbol of hope as a slave who was able to obtain his freedom through his storytelling. Crane describes the black man stuck in a "mid-kingdom" between the tambourine representing the slavery mentality and his native land symbolizing the remains of something