Langston Hughes--"Harlem"

     Harlem, or also known as A Dream Deferred, is short and to the point, but the statements made in it are as bold as can be. Hughes starts out by asking a question of "What happens to a dream deferred?". I think that the line spacing that Hughes leaves after his first question is sort of like a gap for people to think about it before going on to read the next lines. Also, this question seems to have endless amount of answers so Hughes doesn't answer it, but instead puts out thoughts of his own onto the poem. 
     The lines that say," Does it dry up/ like a raisin in the sun?' seem to me like he is saying, is the dream that we dream vanished away just like when a raisin sits in the sun to shrivel up? Maybe it could be that that dream no longer can be maintained because of certain other reasons. 
     The next lines "Or fester like a sore— /And then run?" seem very vivid and gross! A festered sore is not something that anyone would like and maybe Hughes connection with this is to say that we might have that dream that sometimes gets very overbearing and in the end we would rather drop it before it gets even worse. 
     Towards the end he says," Does it stink like rotten meat?/ Or crust and sugar over—/like a syrupy sweet?", which to me is just the same or even worse than a festered sore! As he finishes up with his question, Hughes gets very vivid and imaginative with his response and maybe that has to do with the fact that when is anything sweet and perfect when it comes to dreams??? Hughes could be trying to just look at a reality that many others try to avoid just like when they avoid rotten meat or crusted sweets. 
     Lastly, Hughes says,"Maybe it just sags /like a heavy load./Or does it explode?" The heavy load that he is talking about maybe just means all the struggles that we have to go through in order to achieve what we want and sometimes things may not go right so that could be the explosion that Hughes speaks of. The whole poem from beginning to end seems very pessimistic and as if Hughes had no higher hopes or something went terribly wrong for him.