There are five similes in the poem <em>Harlem</em> by Langston Hughes. He compares a "deferred dream" with:
1. A raisin that dries up in the sun.
2. A sore that festers and then runs.
3. Rotten meat that stinks.
4. A syrupy sweet that crusts and sugars over.
5. A heavy load that sags.
These comparisons may be revealing that the speaker is pessimistic and feels somehow disenchanted and frustrated, since he or she compares a deferred dream, one that hasn't been fulfilled yet, but that could certainly come to fruition in the future, with mostly disgusting things, or things that dry up and become useless, like a raisin, or that used to be sweet but now they are hard or even stale, like a syrupy sweet. It seems as it he or she has given up all hope of fulfilling a dream forever. Hughes is echoing here the aspirations, often cut short, of African Americans in the United States.
