In his poem, “Harlem”, Langston Hughes uses imagery in order to emphasize the various negative effects that a “dream deferred” can have on the human psyche and to give reason to always fulfill them. First, Hughes gives the reader the image of a raisin in the sun drying up. A raisin begins as a grape full of life and juice then turns into a raisin when essentially the life is sucked out of it. This powerful imagery alerts the reader of the dire consequences that can result from this dream deferred. Like the raisin the unfulfilled dream will sit and absorb the life and spirit out a person until there is barely any happiness left. Hughes effectively uses this image of a raisin to convey the disastrous results of the unfulfilled dream. This is
