Deferred Similes

ddimitrannist
4 Δεκ 2015
διαβάστηκε 1 λεπτά

Simile: A figure of speech involving the comparison of one thing with another thing of a different kind, used to make a description more emphatic or vivid.

Harlem, by Langston Hughes

What happens to a dream deferred?

Does it dry up

like a raisin in the sun?

Or fester like a sore—

And then run?

Does it stink like rotten meat?

Or crust and sugar over—

like a syrupy sweet?

Maybe it just sags

like a heavy load.

Or does it explode?

Langston Hughes was part of the artistic movement called the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920's. He wrote poems, short stories, plays, novels. His work was influenced by the sounds and tradition of the blues and jazz.

THE DREAM: Hughes' poem refers to a famous dream, the one mentioned in the title of Martin Luther King's speech in front of the Lincoln Memoria,l during the 1963 march on Washington for jobs and freedom. The speech was a defining moment of the American Civil Rights Movement.