Arianne Almera Adol

‘Dreams’- Langston Hughes Thesis Statement A life without dreams is not life, but death. Dreams give life meaning, and direction. Life without dreams is simply just existing like walking zombies, but not living. Analysis According to the famous Sigmund Freud, dreams are our brain’s psychological pathway to fulfillment of wishes and desires that are trapped deep within our subconscious, and restricted by the dictations of rules and social norms. Through dreams, we conjure images of our most hidden fantasies, and impossibilities of what we believe as reality. Dreams are like a painting with wild, disorganized colors, each hue portraying hidden messages we alone are aware of, and giving life to every emotion associated with every stroke of the brush. Dreams are wordier than any of the longest, most flowery piece of literature. Dreams and their meanings is still a subject that baffle psychologists to this day. Freud said that successfully interpreting dreams can provide significant insights to mental health and condition, in biological, psychological and cognitive aspects. Modern psychologists also support this idea, stating that dream interpretations can play a crucial role in a clinical setting. In the poem “Dreams” by Langston Hughes, the term “dreams” take a more figurative path, representing what comes first to mind upon hearing the word, i.e. “things that we want to be or have, but cannot as of the moment, due to entities and/or circumstances repressing or preventing us from ever taking action.” In the first stanza: Hold fast to dreams/ For if dreams die/ Life is a broken-winged bird/ That cannot fly. Hughes asks the readers to hold fast to their dreams, never letting it die or wither, because if they do, then their lives will be just like that of a bird with a broken wing, unable to fly. This similarly refers to the loss of life's purpose, and independence/freedom. A bird loses its essence or purpose of existence without its wings or ability to fly. In the basic of all reasons' a bird's wings and gift of flight helps it to find food, a mate, and escape from predators essentially its capacity to survive. b Similarly, a person without dreams is like a bird which cannot use its wings and fly. All his aspirations and freedom gone. It is, in every sense of word, a death sentence itself. In the second stanza: Hold fast to dreams/ For when dreams go/ Life is a barren field/ Frozen with snow. Hughes again emphasized the importance of dreams to living a real life. Two things were used to symbolize a life without dream. One is “barren land” and the other is “snow”. A barren field is infertile. It neither grows life, nor support it. Therefore, it’s just a useless land. Snow on the other hand is “cold and freezing”, unable to grow anything, and a death verdict to all forms of life - at least to the majority of organisms that need warmth to survive. There’s no harvest during winter. So the words “frozen with snow” here refer to the “death of all hope in life”. Conclusion: Applying Hughes' piece to our normal life, letting our dreams die, and not doing anything to reach them, devoids life of all its meaning. Dreams make people aspire, and give them purpose. They give us a sense of strength to do more, become more, outside the dictations of social norms, or whatever defines the word "happy" in a materialistic and wordly aspect. Dreams make us realize our limitations, and test us if we all have the guts and determination to step beyond our threshold, and successfully reach for what we initially believed as impossible. Dreams are different forks of paths - a direction or map to something, or a lot of things. If we want to, and we work hard, we can go along a straight path towards our goals. This gives us a reason to wake up every single day of our transient lives. Poems are written by poets who can magically transform words into prose of heavy impact, more so if they are fuelled by emotions and personal experiences. Langston Hughes is a person with mixed-race, but his facial features are African-American. He’s also very proud of his people. His remarkable educational background, an undergrad of Columbia University did not save him from racial discrimination. He experienced hardships in finding and doing jobs that will support himself and his mother financially. His father refused to support him. Despite all these, he never forgot and threw away his first passion, which was poetry. Hughes’ poems and activism also, in a way, paved way to release the members of his race from their own shackles – insecurities, self-doubts, and fear of prejudices by a society dictated by judgment based on the color of skin. Analysis of writing style: “Dreams” is a rather short poem, consisting only of two stanzas. The words used were direct, and not flowery. It was excellently composed - each word smoothly constructed. Despite the use of straightforward words, the whole poem reflects a very deep and strong meaning. In order to give life and impact that can reverberate among readers for a very long time, Hughes effectively exploited the elements of figures of speech, specifically personifications, metaphors and similes. For instance, the two stanzas used the metaphor: First stanza: Life without dreams/dead dreams = broken-winged bird Second stanza: Life without dreams/dead dreams = barren field frozen with snow No meter or form is set for this poem, although rhymes were used, specifically in the 2nd and 4th lines of each stanza. The first, second, and fourth lines of each stanza have four syllables. The third line for the first stanza has seven syllables, while the second stanza has six. This poem, aside from its rhyme, is more of a free verse than metered.