Sound & Sense CH5: Figurative Language

Notes:
● Simile - comparison w/ like or as
● Metaphor - comparison w/o like or as
● Extended Metaphor - Take a wild guess pal
● Extended Simile - Gee, sounds kinda like those simile things..
● Personification - nonhuman things with humanistic characteristics
● Apostrophe - addressing someone dead or absent
● Metonymy - use of something closely related for the thing actually meant

Simile
● “Like a raisin in the sun?”
● “Like a sore-”
● “Stink like rotten meat?”
● “Like a syrupy sweet?”

Metaphor
● “Dry up”
● “And then run?”
● “Crust and sugar over--”
● “Or does it explode?”

Personification
● “Maybe it just sags”

“Dream Deferred” by Langston Hughes

Theme: Pushing aside dreams leaves them time to decay, and become harder to fulfill.

Analysis: Through the author’s use of similes, metaphors, and personification, Langston Hughes
stresses the damage done to dreams when pushed aside. Having questioned what really does
occur “to a dream deferred”, Hughes asks if the dream will “dry up”. Dreams being a concept do
not “dry up”, however, the implied question of the interest in the dream is still communicated.
Comparing the drying dream being “like a raisin in the sun” suggests that the dream has
shriveled and become less pleasant to most, as grape does once becoming a water deprived
raisin, yet the dream being deprived of attention instead. Also being compared to “fester like a
sore” neglecting dreams leaves a wound, an emotional wound, that grows worse and worse and
never seems to heal; in fact, it will refuse to heal “and then run.” The blood from the emotional
wound will run as the dream will run from the dreamer, or even the once-a-dreamer from the
looming dream, now not accomplishable. With an old, neglected dream lingering behind, it can
seem like “it just sags”, just as Hughes personifies the dream. Nothing to hold high and proud,
but rather just drag around, the dream now hangs low and without authority, burdening the
former dreamer “like a heavy load”. A culmination of encumbering guilt to forever claw and
hang on to the past dreamer’s feet. The final suggestion however, asks if the dream will
“explode” instead. To ultimately be lost altogether in the flash of a blast. Irreversible damage to
be done, in which Langston Hughes uses to stress that abandoning a dream leaves it prone to loss
and decay, and may become the spark of happiness that got away.