"Dreams Deferred"

"Dreams Deferred"
Langston Hughes

How many similes and rhetorical question can a person fit into an eleven lined poem? Well this particular poem used five similes and six rhetorical questions. That is a lot. These literary techniques helped to paint a picture in the reader's head, as well as make the reader think. Does a dream deferred magically go away, "Or does it explode?" A dream deferred is basically a dream that one sets to the wayside, because they do not have any intention of acheiving that dream, or they find it to be impossible to acheive.

When learning that the author is African American, the dream that was deferred would probably be the fight against slavery or for civil rights. Though there were bound to be blacks that never put this goal behind them and fought for their freedom all the time, most probably found it an almost impossible task. However, when they tried to place the dream aside, the dream was never fully removed. The last line of the poem, "Or does it explode?", shows that a dream put behind someone may rot for awhile or dry up for the time being, but eventually the dream will no longer be able to be ignored.