Poetic Devices In Harlem

Harlem Poem Analysis
“Hold fast to dreams, for if dreams die, life is a broken winged bird that cannot fly” said Langston Hugh. He wrote this to address the importance of following your dreams because once you stop working hard for the dream, it dies and leaves you heartbroken. In his poem, “Harlem”, Hugh criticizes the consequences of what might happen if dreams are put on hold. His poem include a lot of poetic elements such as simile, personification, diction, rhetorical question etc. Hugh uses simile to compare a dream to different things to portray the aftermath of a delayed dream.
Hugh opens the poem with the simile of comparing delayed dreams to a raisin in the sun. In the line, “Does it [dream] dry up like a raisin in the sun?” (2-3).

Raisin are dried grape, so before it used to be this smooth textured, pulpy, and delicious fruit but now it's dark, and withered raisin because of the sun. This shows how once our dream has been deferred, it changes and becomes a new dream just like the raisin. The sun represents time because in the old days, time was measured by sun’s movement. Also, he shows how black people have fought for their rights for very long time and soon they might give up due to lack of faith left in them. From time to time, the dream changes because people start losing faith that it’s ever going to happen. At the end, people start accepting the fact that they are the ones who have to change the dream a little bit so it can be more achievable. Just like how it’s hard to believe that those green, plumpy, and smooth textured grapes can ever turn into black, wrinkled, and dried raisins. Also just like the evolved dream is never going to change back to the initial dream, the raisin is never changing back to a grape. This leaves a very little chance that the dream will actually come true.
Hugh continues the usage of simile by comparing a longing dream to oozing wound, rotten meat and sweet syrups. He says, “or fester like a sore...stink like rotten meat...or crust and sugar over-like a syrupy sweet” (4-8). Hugh uses the five senses to explain the result of longing dream because he starts with how it would look like a raisin, feel like a fester wound, stink like rotten meat, or taste like sweet syrup. This makes the readers feel more connected because we use these senses everyday in our lives. These senses play an important role in our daily life because without them we wouldn’t function the way we do. Hugh is emphasizing the importance of keeping our dreams alive because once your dream starts to defer, it takes over your five senses that controls most of your life.
In all, Langston Hugh has been writing about dreams to send the message about what happens when the dream is put on hold. It’s closer to dream being never coming true.