Langston Hughes: in the Beginning There Was Language Essay

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In The Beginning, There Was Language A dream is a hope, a wish, and an aspiration. Everyone has dreams about what they want to be when they grow up, how they want to live, whom they want to marry and how their life will turn out. However, not all dreams can come true right away. Many of them are just out of reach and can only be attained by hard work, leadership and determination. The poem "A Dream Deferred" by Langston Hughes is an example of just that, a dream that is just simply out of reach. So what happens to a dream deferred? Deferred, defined by The New American Webster Dictionary, means to put off, delay or postpone something to a later date. Poetry is filled with many different aspects of poetic language just a few of them …show more content…
The last comparison in the poem is to a sagging "heavy load" (10). Some dreams that are too big can sometimes be more of a burden then that of an actual reward. Many people make the mistake of taking on too much or trying to pursue a dream that is simply not attainable for them at that point in their lives. Dreams should be looked forward and worked on, not carried along like an unfinished pile of work. If the dream becomes to ‘heavy' the owner might not be able to bear the load. While metaphors are far and few between in the poem "A Dream Deferred," the last line, "Or does it explode?" (11) makes up for the lack thereof. If one can somehow imagine a dream "exploding," they can share the state of mind that Langston Hughes must have been in when he wrote the line. The closing line of "A Dream Deferred" does anything but end the poem. Rather, it brings up many unwritten questions; does the dream disappear completely or is it scattered everywhere? Is the explosion a good thing, like fireworks, or destructive like a bomb? The field of language and our auditory senses are measureless. There are over three hundred languages in use around the world today and they all affect people in many different ways. Language, under its surface, is alive and is connected to all. The genre of poetry has come to see many different variations and forms of language that can completely change the meaning, tone or sound of a poem. "Does is explode?" (12), the
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