Harlem - Langston Hughes

What an interesting thought and way to look at it. This entire poem is a personification of a dream...even though Hughes isn't giving the dream human-like qualities, it makes it an animate object. The thing about this poem is he's describing each way a person can feel when their dreams aren't attained, which in point, makes the dream more human. It makes me want to attain all my dreams because the dream seems so human, and if I don't it's like I failed at doing something important and then rejected it...just like that. It's a very sad but persuasive way to look at this type of situation. I really will have to strive harder for my dreams now.

Towards the end, I like how he says "Maybe it just sags like a heavy load" because by that time, even though the poem is short, I really feel like I'm sagging...and when you're sagging you just want that pressure to go away, to just magically disappear, and then at the last line that pressure explodes! That probably isn't the best thing to happen to a deferred dream either, but at least you don't have to go around carrying all that weight of failing at your dream.

I want to know why the poem is named Harlem though...is it saying that many people in Harlem can't reach their dreams? Isn't Harlem a really crime-infested area (at least parts of it?). That explosion could correlate to the last line...with guns going off and stuff, it's like a mini-explosion. Is he saying that people who can't attain their dreams rely on crime to help their problems? That's probably a really risky thing to say.

And the raisin in the sun...there's a book called "A Raisin in the Sun" ... I want to know if those two have anything to do with each other, and if so, who got the influence from who?