“What happen to a dream deferred” is how the poem opens (Hughes line 1). The dream Hughes speaks of is one of equality. He goes on to answer this question with a series of multiple other questions. “Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun? Or fester like a sore and then run?
This poem expresses frustration at the inability to fulfill one’s dreams. The eleven-line poem uses word play and symbolism to express an overwhelming sense of frustration. Using questions to guide the reader deeper into contemplation, Hughes uses symbolism and similes throughout the poem to present the reader with graphic images. Food symbolism appears more than once in the second stanza, symbolizing that dreams, like perishables, may be good at first but change when ignored, whether for better or worse. The symbolism of the raisin in line 3, drying in the sun, symbolizes the power of a dream, like the sweetness and flavor in a grape, condensing and becoming more concentrated.
Theme For English B (1951) The poem, “Theme For English B”, written by Langston Hughes is greatly unique. The way that Langston Hughes expresses himself through writing is like nothing I have seen before. His style of writing is very smooth and precise but sometimes written in metaphoric slang. The main ideas that I will focus on when composing the explication of this poem are, the true meaning of this poem, the author’s personal attachment to this particular poem, and also the imagery and word use of the author. In the poem “Theme For English B”, by Langston Hughes, Hughes talks about the African American struggle for equality.
Another famous figure of the Harlem Renaissance was Langston Hughes. Hughes was a poet/playwright/novelist, who defined the era of the Harlem Renaissance with his essay, “The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain” (Hughes 6). A prominent female figure of the Harlem Renaissance was Zora Neale Hurston. Hurston was a writer and poet who was most known for her famous novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God. During the Harlem Renaissance, the famous jazz musician, Duke Ellington was able to find his place in the era.
Although the subject of this poem is morbid its overall message is a positive one. The moral of this literary piece boils down to the point that living is a lot easier than committing suicide. The poem has an ABAB rhyme scheme as well that further adds to this poem’s amusement. She begins with, “Razors pain you; Rivers are damp; Acids stain you; & drugs cause cramp…” In this stanza you can see she lists razors, rivers, acid, and drugs as different ways someone can kill themselves but then gives reasons why they shouldn’t. In the first line, she implies you could kill yourself using a razor but then says they “pain you”, as in if you did use a razor to commit suicide it would cause too much pain.
In the poem “life” Dunbar uses simple diction, parallel structure, and a shift between his two stanzas to show how he only needs the little things in life. In the first stanza his description of “life” makes it seem like it is horrible. The speaker says “a crust of bread and a corner to sleep in.” Dunbar uses a lot of comparisons to make the bad things seem worse. The speaker says “a minute to smile and an hour to weep in.” This comparison makes the “hour to weep in” seem worse because he only gets “a minute to smile.” Another comparison Dunbar uses is “a pint of joy to a peck of trouble.” This comparison also has the same effect, “a pint of joy” seems nothing to “a peck of trouble.” In the second stanza there is a shit in tone. In the first stanza Dunbar is describing bad things, “an hour to weep,” “a peck of trouble,” “never a laugh,” but in the second stanza he starts saying how life is also full of good things.
The poet incorporates the tone to show that after a person has done wrong, like stealing or cheating, as a reaction, we ask for forgiveness, either because we have real guilt or because we believe we should ask for forgiveness without actually meaning it. Pleasure is personified to illuminate the author’s true feelings about the plum being eaten. “So sweet and so cold” symbolizes that the forgiveness he has asked for wasn’t sympathetic due to the fact that he did not regret eating the delicious plum. Also, the tone that the author produces is teasing, teasing the owner of the plum by expressing how good the plum actually was, and that the owner can’t have it anymore because he ate it. The poet ends with a tone that is inevitable to the theme of the poem.
“Harlem” Poem “Harlem”, by Langston Hughes, uses a combination of dramatization, rhetorical questions and similes to stimulate the audience’s interpretation on the actuality of each object and how it is being used to defer dreams. The way the similes are being expressed gives the impression the speaker is very concerned with unresolved dreams. The poem itself discusses and questions what actually happens to the dreams many people put off. Most people in life have many dreams but whether the actually pay attention to them or not is the answers the question. The speaker is, in a sense, stuck between the first and the last line.
They have enjoyed and learned from Hughes poems and will continue to enjoy and learn from them well into the future. The reason they would read them is for an understanding of the past and how the black man was treated. These poems tells us that in the time Hughes wrote these, the white people did not look at the black people as people, but as objects, though beauty has no eye for color. Both of these poems have the common theme of beauty throughout them. Hughes exemplifies beauty in the poem “I, Too, Sing America, “They’ll see how beautiful I am” (Hughes 2011, I, Too, Sing America, line
Langston Hughes Explication In this explication of works by Langston Hughes, I will explore his poems “Merry-Go-Round”, “Po’ Boy Blues”, “Democracy”, and “Freedom’s Plow”. Throughout his writing career, Hughes was a prolific and significant figure in both the Harlem Renaissance and Civil Rights Movement and constantly took stances regarding one or the other or both in his poetry. In this explication, we will explore how Hughes expressed his concerns over civil rights through writing in attempt to better understand the reasons and meanings within his works. Merry-Go-Round The first thing I think most of us 20th century readers notice about Langston Hughes’ Merry-Go-Round is the language that immediately draws our minds back to the Jim Crow era. In the first line before the poem itself actually begins, there is a line that reads “COLORED CHILD AT CARNIVAL”.