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Langston HughesA modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
“Harlem” is a free verse poem organized into four mostly irregular stanzas. The poem doesn’t use a prescribed metrical pattern, but there is a strong sense of rhythm throughout. Short lines punctuate and longer lines glide. End-line punctuation creates subtle interruptions. “Does it dry up” (Line 1) is followed by “like a raisin in the sun?” (Line 2). The space between lines allows the reader to consider possibility and highlights the speaker’s considered responses.
Though there isn’t a formal rhyme scheme, Hughes uses playful end rhymes: sun/run, meat/sweet, load/explode and half-rhymes like sugar/fester/defer. The natural lift in the inflection of the questions provides a lightness of tone. The musical effects are euphonious—a pleasant set of sounds that offer a contrast to the uncomfortable imagery.
The speaker’s uses different registers to navigate its big question. On one level, the voice sounds academic. The opening uses the language of philosophic inquiry. The diction feels formal and distant: “What happens to a dream deferred?” (Line 1)—an opening line that sounds like it is introducing an abstract disquisition.
By Langston Hughes
Children’s Rhymes
Langston Hughes
Cora Unashamed
Langston Hughes
Dreams
Langston Hughes
I look at the world
Langston Hughes
I, Too
Langston Hughes
Let America Be America Again
Langston Hughes
Me and the Mule
Langston Hughes
Mother to Son
Langston Hughes
Mulatto
Langston Hughes
Mule Bone: A Comedy of Negro Life
Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston
Not Without Laughter
Langston Hughes
Slave on the Block
Langston Hughes
Thank You, M'am
Langston Hughes
The Big Sea
Langston Hughes
Theme for English B
Langston Hughes
The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain
Langston Hughes
The Negro Speaks of Rivers
Langston Hughes
The Ways of White Folks
Langston Hughes
The Weary Blues
Langston Hughes
Tired
Langston Hughes
African American Literature
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Black History Month Reads
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Books on Justice & Injustice
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Books on U.S. History
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Civil Rights & Jim Crow
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Equality
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Harlem Renaissance
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Nation & Nationalism
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School Book List Titles
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Short Poems
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The Future
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