Unit One Individual Reading Assignment In this first poem entitled A Dream Deferred, Hughes compares the American Dream to a raisin, a sore, rotten meat, and sugar. This poem is made up of a multi-level rhetorical database. Line one asks the first question which is also the main question. “What happens to a dream deferred?” After this first sentence is laid out, then he lists four other rhetorical questions to answer that first question. But in the third and second to last lines, Hughes answers his question with a declarative sentence, stating “Maybe it just sags like a heavy load.,” as if comparing it to the American Dream, saying that it just weighs us down with us trying and trying to achieve this American Dream. With another rhetorical question, Hughes basically ‘explodes’ the idea that the American Dream is reachable. The second poem entitled Let America Be America Again, explains at the beginning, the ‘dream’ of America. Let it be “where opportunity is real” or “life is free” it describes how Hughes views the American ‘Dream’ as only a dream and something that no one can actually achieve. It states that out in the first three stanzas then goes on to how he sees the American Dream. Hughes sees this concept as a dream and only a dream, stating that he has worked and worked and nothing came out of it. He says “I am the farmer, bondsman to the soil. I am the worker sold to the machine. I am the Negro, servant to you all. I am the people, humble, hungry, mean--Hungry
