Comparing Poems 'Harlem And Buffalo Bill's'

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Hope is a central quality that is necessary for human happiness. How can a person be happy while being hopeless? Dreams are what keep us moving forward. “Harlem” by Langston Hughes and “Buffalo Bill’s” by E.E. Cummings are united by themes of hopelessness in the face of loss. In “Harlem” Hughes examines the scenario of a dream being thrown off track, whether by conscious choice or by some outside force. Throughout the poem, he uses rhetorical questions to answer the original question: “What happens to a dream deferred?” Hughes suggests several possible outcomes for a dream that has been deferred. He first likens the dream itself to something commonplace—a raisin, a sore, meat, or a sweet—and then proposes what would happen to these things should they be ignored. An unattended raisin will shrivel and dry, a sore will fester and run, meat will rot, and a sweet will crust over. These metaphors paint a picture for the reader that causes them to cringe in disgust. Hughes effectively provokesthe reader out of complacency and forces them to consider their own dreams that have been deferred. A raisin is a sweet nutritious fruit unless dried up and hardened to the point where it cannot be eaten, meat is full of protein and nourishes the body, but when it becomes rancid can harm the body and even be lethal.…show more content…
In “Harlem,” Hughes explicitly considers the destructive consequences of lost or forgotten dreams, specifically on African Americans, while in “Buffalo Bill’s,” Cummings subtly addresses both the death of a man and how it signified the end of an era. When Cummings decided to use defunct rather than simply dead it illustrates that Buffalo Bill not only died but ceased to exist, along with the ideals he stood for. While Cummings’ work is overshadowed by a tone of hopeless sorrow Hughes’ language is more frustrated, and even angry. Both poems discuss American dreams and how they can easily be diverted or

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