Dream Variations

Dream Variations
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Dream Variations
By Langston Hughes
At first glance, the poem, "Dream Variations" by Langston Hughes seems to be blameless and not projected to insult any audience thus it was written during the Harlem Renaissance where direct point of view were not yet prevailing in African American poetry and thus choosing this poem to analyze figurative language, perhaps a deeper meaning can be found.Analysis on formal elements of the poem, the speaker wishes to be able to dance in the sunlight and rest under a tree at night and the first imagery encountered in this poem is in these lines,
"To whirl and to dance.
Till the white day is done" (3-4)
The term "white" can be understood in many ways, especially since we are at present living in an era with much symbolism for the same words and one way to define this is to associate it with the word for a Caucasian person. It is extensively known that Africans were incarcerated by the “white man” for many generations and in this line, “white day” makes it seem like the “white man” controls the day, which means that they controlled the activities of the slaves thus the speaker d...