A Dream Deferred

This chapter in the book is about figurative language, so I would consider it silly if I didn't even attempt to tackle question 11, even though I truly struggle with figurative language. But don't worry, I got this. The main focus of this poem is on five similes and a metaphor. Each simile means something particular, as well as that last metaphor, which carries the most meaning of them all. First, a dream might dry up like a raisin in the sun, eventually losing volume and importance until the dreamer forgets all about their earlier aspirations. Or it might fester like a sore, eating away at a person until it tears them down and makes them bitter towards the world because they could not fulfill their dream. Or perhaps it will stink like rotten meat, causing the person to be disgusted by what they once thought would be a truly grand dream. Or perhaps it crusts over like some sort of deliciously sticky sweet, becoming sugar-coated to the point that the person justifies their own failure to realize their dreams. Maybe even it just weighs down on the person, beating them down until they can no longer stand it. These are all perfectly valid possibilities. However, they are set apart from the metaphor, both physically by a single blank line in the poem, and analytically, as the previous five are similes but this one is an almighty metaphor (specifically an implied one, between the dream and something that explodes). The metaphor itself indicates that a dream could suddenly turn to violence in an attempt for the dreamer to make it reality, and it can spill out to affect many other things, like an explosion. The separation of the metaphor from the other similes indicates two things: either the speaker thinks it is the most likely to happen, or he is indicating that it is the worst possible outcome for a deferred dream to have.

This is an explosion. I estimate zero people will understand this one.

Three - Spin

First off, the brief paragraph about Mitchell Sanders sending his body lice to his draft board literally made me laugh out loud. Also, I found it intriguing that he placed a mildly amusing story immediately after a mildly sad story about a one-legged child (although he at least got chocolate in the end). It looks almost like a juxtaposition of paragraphs, if that's even allowed.

Anyway, to me, the most important part of this chapter was O'Brien's simile: "On occasions, the war was like a Ping-Pong ball. You could put fancy spin on it, you could make it dance" (p. 31). In several ways, this chapter seems to be set up like a ping-pong match, in which every return hit seems to put a different angle of spin on the ball. Each new spin carries with it a new emotion which is brought out in a different story. Each new story (or "spin," if you will) brings on a different angle of the war and its effect on Tim. ping A sad story about a one-legged child, pong a funny story about Sanders and his lice, ping a calming story about checkers, pong a reminiscent story about O'Brien after the war, ping a mellow story about Lavender all doped up, pong a bittersweet story about poppa-san, ping a boring story about nothing, pong a guilty story about writing, ping a peace story about a man and a nurse, pong an amusing story about a raindance and the patient buffalo, ping a sickening story about a puppy, pong a sad story about a boy playing soldier. The whole chapter is really just a series of stories that all serve to show that the war wasn't all just bloody and gory depressing war stories, nor was it fantastic stories of glorious triumph. In the end, to use one of my most favorite phrases, it was just a bunch of stuff that happened. And that's how most things are.

These are two cats playing Ping-Pong. One can only
assume that they are quite skilled in the art of spin