"Dream Deferred"-Similes

"Does it dry up
like a raisin in the sun?"

After someone has given up on a dream, where does it go? This is the question Hughes poses in his poem. Personally, I believe that a dream never disappears. It may be replaced or modified, but even if someone pushes his or her dream off to the side, it still lingers in the mind. Hughes uses similes to create an image of a "dream deferred." All of his comparisons are to something negative, such as the "raisin in the sun" or the "rotten meat." Obviously he views dreams that have been abandoned as a terrible thing. They can sag "like a heavy load" on our minds until we are consumed by the idea of what could have been.