This week in English 03, we read the poem “Harlem” by Langston Hughes. What is unique about his poem is that Hughes uses rhetorical questions to emphasize how someone’s dream deferred could slowly diminish the dream and even the person. Hughes also uses consecutive similes in his rhetorical questions to create images for his audience to relate these dreams to. However, Hughes does not group these rhetorical questions in any random order, but arranges the rhetorical questions in a specific order and structure to create an overall tone and effect to this poem.
Hughes employs a specific structure to allow his poem to convey his message. He starts out with having the first stanza as just a single line. He does this to directly state the overall topic of his poem. Hughes then shows a transition of thought by creating a 7-lined stanza. By separating these lines from the first line, he is revealing that he is switching to examples that express his main topic. He shortens these lines to seclude the stanza to express how a dream could slowly diminish in value over time. Hughes conveys this in this stanza by bringing up four examples: a raisin, a sore, meat, and a syrupy sweet. These four examples can only become these grotesque scenes if they are improperly taken care of. A raisin too long in the sun will shrivel up and lose its nutritional value. A sore not treated properly will fester and then run. A piece of meat left out unattended will just lose nutritional value just like the raisin, and no longer be edible. Then by including the syrupy sweet, he again reflects how if something is left out for too long, the sugar will clump up and won’t sweeten the food anymore. The luster it conveyed no longer is present when left out for a long time. Therefore, Hughes uses this stanza to bring forth examples that emphasize how time prolonged can lead to the deterioration of things in life. Thus, he uses this stanza to show how only the dream will slowly diminish if the person does not have hope that the dream will ever be realized.
Hughes separates the next two lines from the huge stanza to change the emphasis of the dream diminishing to how the person that holds the dream could be physically affected by it. The 7-lined stanza only explains instances of what happens to the dream, but does not correlate to how it affected the person physically. The two-lined stanza secludes a physical attribute on what the dream could do to someone. The last line being by itself emphasizes the extreme case of what could happen if someone does not achieve his or her aspiration in life. Hughes states, “Or does it explode?” in this line, which grants the audience a picture of a bomb. Nothing beneficial results from an explosion: only death and turmoil. Therefore, Hughes relates that the dream could destroy the person all together. This is the ultimate extreme, and that is why Hughes puts this line by itself and in italics for emphasis.
Therefore, Hughes’ use of similes ultimately shows that these are possible scenarios that could happen if someone’s dream is deferred, but are not scenarios that will happen. How much they are involved in their dream truly correlates to how they will be affected by it being delayed. By Hughes arranging these rhetorical questions in this specific order, he builds up the least dangerous scenarios to the most menacing scenarios created by a dream deferred.
I like how you acknowledge the form of the poem, and how the breaks signal different switches. You also state that each of the images depicts a scene that was not taken care of properly, which can clearly be related to not taking care of his particular dream.
ReplyDeleteI like how you said the person with the dream will be affected on various levels depending on how involved in the dream they are.
Good writing, I like your analysis.
I like that you talked about the structure of the poem but I think you focused to much on the form. You did relate the form back to the poem and how each simile relates, which i think you did very well. I especially like how you stated that Hughes uses the stanza to bring back examples that emphasize how time prolonged can lead to the deterioration of things in life. Overall I think that you did a very good job on your analysis of the poem.
ReplyDeleteAlex, one of the things that stood out in your entry was how you listed the four examples next to each other. These four nouns ("a raisin, a sore, meat, syrupy sweet") hold a lot of meaning because Hughes probably chose them carefully. Just seeing these words next to each other help me think about how they are related to one another and a dream deferred. Plus, you broke the poem down by lines, which makes it easier to digest and analyze.
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