"Dream Deferred" by Langston Hughes

What does the last line of Hughes’s “Dream Deferred” imply? What does Hughes see as the consequences of a dream deferred?

1) This poem was very interesting for me to think about how he basically says that a dream has a time limit before it’s not worth anything. Although it’s very short I believe he says a lot in a very few words. He explains the results that time has on not only objects but dreams. This poem was easier for me to pick apart and understand than most which allowed me to enjoy the reading.

2) In Hughes’s poem, “Dreams Deferred”, his last line asks, “Or does it explode,” which implies to me that when a dream is not fulfilled, it can have an effect on the people and atmosphere around you. A dream deferred is compared to a ticking bomb, in which only you can change by either achieving the dream or letting it go to waste. A bomb not only affects everyone around you, including yourself, but your atmosphere in which you live. He then takes that idea and puts a dream in the place of the bomb to show that when you don’t follow through with your dreams they don’t ever go away. It’ll just hang over you and have an effect on the world around you. The consequences of a dream deferred “sags like a heavy load” on your conscience. It was once a dream of ideas and is compared physically to things that go bad overtime. As time passes the dream is no longer a beautiful thing, but something that has been neglected and spoiled. The theme throughout the poem is the consequences of time and the effects it has.