Harlem

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1951

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Summary

Background

Poem Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Literary Devices

Form and Meter

“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.

Narrative Voice

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. In keeping with this academese register, the speaker eschews pronouns: There is no “I,” “we,” or even “they,” as all references to who is doing the actions of the poem are erased.

The voice then moves into a more conversational, playful register. Rather than a theoretical discussion, the speaker offers ruefully funny comparisons of deferred dreams to images of ugliness and decay. Running sores and rotting meat are visceral images. Words like fester and stink are direct and evocative. This is emotionally engaged language.

The last line “Or does it explode?” (Line 11) brings the two tones together in a powerful statement. Intellectual control and empathy lead to a logical conclusion.

Repetition

Different kinds of repetition provide structure and highlight the influence of jazz. The poem unfolds as a series of questions that repeat in a grammatical pattern for readers to hold onto. The questions create a sense of expectation that doesn’t pay off in a definitive answer, enacting a version of the deferral the poem decries.

Another type of structural repetition occurs through similes, which echo each other in their description of the corrosive effects of time on untended objects. Fruit, wounds, meat, and candy rot and decay in a similar fashion, mirroring the previous object's trajectory and forecasting the one coming next.

Jazz-aligned repetition occurs through the poem's soundscape. Aural effects like alliteration (words that begin with the same sound) provide musicality and regulate rhythm. The d sounds of the poem's most important phrase, “dream deferred” (Line 1) stick in memory and carry through in “does” (Lines 2, 6) and “dry” (Line 2);also is echoing in the end sounds of “load” (Line 10) and “explode” (Line 11). Plosive p consonants hit hard and add stress to words like “happens” (Line 1) and “up” (Line 2). Meanwhile, sibilants (s sounds) add a cloying, hissing glide to the nauseating flavor of “crust”, “sugar”, “syrupy”, and “sweet” (Lines 6-7). Together, they add a percussive element to the poem—one well suited to the improvisations and rhythms of bebop.

Related Titles

By Langston Hughes

Study Guide

Children’s Rhymes