Langston Hughes: Experience With Dreams

People have dreams or goals to achieve something, whether it is wanting to be the next greatest basketball player, becoming an Oscar-winning actress, or even a simple dream of just graduating from high school or college and pursuing a dream career. Sometimes those dreams get put off or some dreams don’t exist anymore because of other things in life. The author, Langston Hughes, once wondered what happened to the dreams that people had dreams that didn’t come true. Once he grew older he felt how it was to lose a dream he once had because of obstacles in his way. The author was able to describe his curiosity about dreams and his own experience about dreams through the different devices of poetry.

the author uses different devices such as metaphors and similes or alliteration to show the different varieties of expressing emotion and experience. 

Langston Hughes writes about his experience with dreams in the poem Harlem and As I grew older but with different uses of poetic devices. The poet’s use of similes creates an understanding that bad things happen to those who put off or get rid of their dreams. The poem Harlem is about trying to understand what happens to a person whose dream doesn’t come true. The poet expresses a lot of curiosity when it comes to learning about dreams and what happens when a person has a dream. The poet thinks they leave scars, they don’t have any life to them, or if the dream was really important they would leave a lot of damage. The author uses similes to relate to his audience. “What happens to a dream deferred, does it dry up like a raisin inf the sun? Or fester like sore and then run? ” (Hughes 1-4). This quote shows how the author uses similes to show how he is curious about what happens to deferred dreams. His similes prove that bad things happen to deferred dreams. The author is comparing a deferred dream to a grape that has dried up in the sun and sore that has been untreated and is now infected. The poetic device being used is a metaphor. The author is saying a deferred dream was a dream who had effort put into it. It had a meaning but since that dream was put off the dream now doesn’t have any meaning to the person. The deferred dream also can leave a scare because it has been neglected.  The author’s use of question marks and what he compares a deferred dreams show that he is creating a tone of curiosity and a message of bad things happen. 

The author also uses a poetic device in the poem As I grew older. The poet’s use of imagery shows his struggle of once losing a dream he had but getting the passion back. The poem as I As grew older is about how Langston had once lost a dream that was very important to him. He came to realize that this dream was so important to him that he decided to go back to it. Later there are challenges in having this dream come true. Those challenges are the color of his skin. Langston is an African American, that deals with racial discrimination. He learns to overcome racial discrimination by having pride and joy in his dream. He realizes that by overcoming this obstacle that their many things he can accomplish. “No longer the light of my dream, above me, only the thick wall, only the shadow, my hands, my dark hands, break through the wall!, Find my dream ” (Hughes 7-13). This quote shows that although there are obstacles there is still away to achieve his dream even if it means taking it head-on. There is a large thick wall in front of the author and a shadow that is hiding the author. The poetic device being used is imagery. The author is an African American and as an African American, there is racial discrimination to silence him from seen or heard, to stop him from achieving his dreams. The author’s use of imagery to see the struggle of his dream has created deep emotion and passion but also a strength.

In both poems, the devices of metaphors, similes, and imagery are used to show that the author is showing how he has a had experience with dreams and a way of o finding his own. In the first poem, the author used similes to show that if a dream is deferred it can leave temporary or permanent damage. In the second poem, the author used imagery to describe the obstacles in his way to achieving his dream and so many more dreams. the author is stating that when a person has a dream they have to achieve it even though there may be challenges along with achieving a dream otherwise bad things will happen to them such as giving up and never wanting to try again.  people have dreams, whether it’s becoming an award-winning actress or a basketball star but that also comes with struggle and wanting to give up but even though there may be obstacles they can overcome them with the passion they have for that dream.