18 pages • 36 minutes read
Langston HughesDreams
Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1923A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Literary Devices
Form and Meter
The poem’s form is small and compact and its size belies the enormous message carried within. Hughes’s speaker doesn’t address a minor or secondary issue, but they illustrate the singular, essential importance of hope. As the chain of symbolism indicates, dreams symbolize hope, and hope represents the key to an active life. The short form of the poem contrasts with the crucial pertinence of hope, and the tension enhances the weight of dreams.
Due to the concise length, the speaker puts pressure on the reader to fill in the gaps. With a longer poem, the speaker can explain in detail the consequences of a hopeless life. The lyrical form makes the poem less didactic. While the speaker expresses the drastic consequences of losing hope, the reader must provide the context and draw conclusions from the two dispiriting metaphors. The form then turns the poem into a collaboration between the speaker and the reader.
The almost identical stanzas reinforce the wisdom and methodology of the speaker. The poem isn’t messy—it’s quite neat, and its organization reflects the speaker’s thought-out message. The meter furthers the exacting tone, with almost every line featuring iambic diameter—two sets of unstressed-stressed syllables. Thus, in Line 1, don’t stress “hold,” stress “fast”; don’t stress “to,” but stress “dreams.” Line 7 deviates from iambic diameter. Like people and their hopes, the poem’s meter is vulnerable.
Metaphor
A metaphor is a literary device that allows the poet to present something in a different context. It takes example 1 and shows how it connects to example 2, though it is not the same as example 2. However, by seeing example 1 through the lens of example 2, they learn about example 1.
Thus, in “Dreams,” example 1 is hope and example 2 is the hurt bird and the empty, frozen field. Through metaphor, the speaker makes an abstract idea—hope—specific. The reader can see the debilitating consequences of a life absent of aspiration. They can view the vivid image of the “broken-winged bird / That cannot fly” (Lines 3-4) and the graphic illustration of the “barren field / Frozen with snow” (Lines 7-8). Thus, metaphor serves as a warning and a motivation. The metaphors show the reader the unbecoming life that meets people without hope, and the gloomy comparisons spur the reader to defend their hopes from the relatively hostile world.
Arguably, the poem features implicit metaphors. If the reader can see how hopelessness turns life into a bird that can’t fly, then they can see how hope turns life into a bird with powerful wings that can fly anywhere. If the reader can examine how a life minus aspirations becomes an empty, frozen, snowy field, they can intuit how life with aspirations produces a bright, warm, abundant field.
Repetition
Repetition is a literary device where the poet repeats words or phrases to stress a theme, symbol, motif, or other literary device. The repetition of “[h]old fast to dreams” (Lines 1, 5) calls attention to the urgency to keep dreams close and maintain a firm grasp on hope. By repeating the line, the speaker doubles down on its importance. In the poem, hope becomes the source of life. Hope is vulnerable, and people can’t be reckless with it. They must hold dreams tight, as the speaker tells the reader not once but two times.
The poem also features repetition due to how Stanza 2 repeats the structure of Stanza 1. Each stanza has four lines and one sentence. In the stanzas, the second and last lines rhyme, and each line contains iambic diameter save for Line 3, which comes with an extra syllable. The repetition reinforces the deliberateness of the speaker, and it creates a pattern that is relatively easy to follow. The speaker isn’t trying to trick the reader and sound excessively complex. They want the reader to learn about the consequences of a life without dreams, and the repetition creates a singsong voice that’s straightforward and clear.
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By Langston Hughes
