Topic > Critical Analysis of "I Dream A World" by Langston Hughes

The author brings to life numerous images "whatever race you are" (10), "black or white" (9), in a world everything should be shared and treated equally. Other images describe the beauty and purity of the new dream world: “peace adorns its paths” (4), no more “soul-weakening greed” and the “loving and joyful earth.” By drawing a picture about the "weakening of the soul" and the "greed that ruins our days", the author elicits graphic images, to arouse repugnant feelings, since those are characteristics that stain all of us, "whatever race you are " (10). Towards the end of the poem (line 14) the ugly images are replaced with a simile: an image of beautiful joy, ever present and impartial, compared to the beauty and uniqueness of "like a pearl" (14). A pearl is something that only white, rich people could have had, definitely not poor black people, and so it is with joy, which poor black people could only dream of. In line 6 the author uses the imagery of taste, attributing 'sweetness' to 'freedom', perhaps because everyone would know what sweets taste like and make you feel, and due to racism, blacks would not have experience of what sweetness is. freedom, so "sweet" is as close as it gets