In this poem, Hughes heavily employs similes to describe the types of dreams people may have. He also takes care to juxtapose a negative analogy with a positive one to express the duality of dreams; not all of them are pleasant. Hughes initial similes relate happy, quickly forgotten, fleeting dreams to "raisins in the sun" and bothersome dreams to "a sore" (Hughes). He goes on to compare nightmares to "rotten meat" and dreams of ecstasy to a "syrupy sweet" (Hughes). All of these similes utilize organic imagery which could emphasize the vitality and infinite possibility that dreams embody. Hughes' final simile, however, does not seem to address dreams quite so literally. To say a dream "sags like a heavy load" would be saying that it depresses a person and hinders his happiness (Hughes). As such, Hughes might be referring to dreams as ambitions that people hold onto. The heavy load would be a challenging ambition while the raisin, sore, rotten meat, and syrupy sweet would all represent passing desires, ambitions unrealized, ambitions proven impossible, and ambitions come to fruition, respectively. The ambiguity of Hughes' usage of dream and the similes he utilizes allow for his audience to interpret the poem in different ways. As such, the two techniques contribute significantly to the meaning of the work.
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