Dreamed Deferred

In the poem "Dreamed Deferred" by Langston Hughes, a rhetorical question is asked to begin the poem. "What happens to a dream deferred?". Although the question is not requiring a response, the question is a simple question that many people can relate to. What happens to an aspiration or a goal that somehow gets messed up? From this point, the speaker begins to ask more rhetorical questions and also uses an alliteration (dream deferred, does it dry up?) Also, an anaphora is used through the question "Does it". Furthermore, several similes are created in the rhetorical questions. Talk about using literary devices... Yet, all of these literary techniques contribute to the poem as a whole. The questions engage the reader and make the reader contemplate the question. Also, the similes that Hughes uses have a deeper meaning. For example, the first simile "Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun?" (lines 2-3) means more than a dried up raisin. The raisin stands for the dream being changed over time. All of the similes that Hughes uses have this same purpose. Mainly, through using several different, easy to follow, literary devices, the reader truly is able to imagine and discover what the speakers point is throughout the entirety of the poem.