Analysis Of Harlem By Langston Hughes

In 'Harlem,' Langston Hughes is saying that dreams are an essential part of survival. He begins his poem by asking a question, “What happens to a dream deferred?” When you delay a dream, what becomes of it? Rather than fading away, Hughes compares dreams to food, a basic component of life. When dreams are put off, they become dried and shrunken like raisins, and they are not as ripe as the grapes they came from. Hughes is saying that dreams are an important part of life, and when they are ignored, they pollute and infect everything around them. The last line, 'or does it explode?', swoops in at the end of the poem and shocks the reader with its intense violence. The result of a dream deferred being the consequence of a bomb that's gone off,