poetry analysis #2

Dreams

Hold fast to dreams
For if dreams die
Life is a broken-winged bird
That cannot fly.
Hold fast to dreams
For when dreams go
Life is a barren field
Frozen with snow.

Langston Hughes

Analysis:

With the title "Dreams" I think the author autimatically makes the readers think mystically and just go into their creative side. The poem seems to bwe very hopeful and full of joy. But when you paraphase the poem the readers goes into a more deperssing and emotional mood because the poem is saying that don't let your dreams die and hold on to them or else your cannot live freely and the life your living would be barren. First of all we look at the repitition, "Hold fast to dreams" on lines 1 and 5. This reptition puts a strong emphasizes with the next lines "For if dreams die", line 2, and "For when dreams go", line 6, in that people's dreams or destinies are things that are just temporary and that if you lose the time to put them into action you'll lose everything. With the metaphor, "Life is a broken-winged bird", line 3, you can see that without dreams humans can't do anything because mainly what birds do is fly and soar through the sky, but if their wings are broken they can't do the one thing in thier live that is meaningful. Also, from line 7, "Life is a barren field" we can see how much meaningless, worthless, and hopeless a life can be without dreams. Barren has this connotation, that connotes that dreams are very important. Finally, in the last line, "Frozen with snow", although snow has this mystical connotation, the world "Frozen" automatically puts chills on readers minds which makes them feel really bad. I believe the tone of this poem to be very depressing and saying that there's no hope. After finding the deeper meaning, I believe, the title is not bringing this mystical part to the poem, but a hopeful part, emotionally attaching to people's inner heart. Therefore the theme of this poem is a shouting from the author of not necessarily depression but from the great zest of life screaming that we need to grab onto those dreams and live life to the fullness and grab on to every opportunity and chance that life throws at us.

Reasons:

The reason why I chose this poem was because even though it is short, there are just so much more meaning and I wanted to show how the tone and the mood can be so different in just little play of words. I wanted people to see how much powerful just a couple of words could be and how much joy and hope it could bring to many different people.