"Dream Deferred"

"Or does it explode?" (11).

"Dream Deferred" by Langston Hughes is very interesting in that Hughes uses six separate comparisons in an effort of expressing the emotions of an African American trying to fit into American society.  I chose the line above because it starkly contrasts the other five comparisons.  What brought me to notice it first was definitely the italics and separation from the other comparisons.  It brought my eye to it when I first scanned the poem and forced me to accept that all of the other comparisons were leading up to a greater message.  The first five similes were each individual ways of showing that the dreams postponement could be easily overlooked by the speaker since the speaker obviously felt that they were a small obstacle.  This is juxtaposed by the magnitude of an exploding dream.  The final, and lone, metaphor drove home the fact that while the five previous consequences of a longing dream may not seem as serious, the elevating risk-factors clearly end in a lost cause.  Dreams are being compared to bombs because they are something that you can see smoking, but there is no tangible danger until it actually explodes, just like the lingering effects of reaching for an unobtainable dream.