Figurative lanuages with Hughes and Plath

In Harlem, Hughes uses figurative language to explain the consequences of unattended dreams. A major section in this poem, the second stanza (line 2-8), uses similes of visual objects like a raisin, a sore, and syrup to describe the feelings of deferred dreams. In the second and third line, “Does it dry it like a raisin in the sun?”, the original dream is referred as a grape. A fresh grape that is at its best quality, is green, juicy, and plump; but when dream left abandoned, it turns unattractive-black, dry and wrinkly.
In the following line, “Or fester like a sore- And then run?”, the unfulfilled dreams are compared to a sore. A wound that becomes part of the body, and left untreated, it becomes infected and form pus. For line 6, “Does it stink like rotten meat?” The simile of a rotten meat and its foul smell refers to the unavoidable strong odor that gives off by a decaying dead meat. For line 8, it continues with more senses, “Or crust and sugar over- like a syrupy sweet?”, comparing unused syrups turn crusty and becomes unusable. These objects all refer a sense of decay and waste when dream become referred.

The use of tangible objects and senses helps to convey the poet’s emotions. He uses smell, taste, and objects that everyone can experience in everyday life, it would help readers to have a better understanding of the feelings that expressed by the figurative language. Hughes uses these similes because he wants to target his audience to a community of lower working class people. The use of simile with the food and the experience that those people would eat and encounter normally at that time would helps to relate the image better with the audience.

In the poem "Daddy", Plath also uses figurative language to describe her complex relationship with her dad by using images of a historical event-the Holocaust. She also uses repetitive words and similes to convey for emotions. The most prevalent image, as written in line 32 to 35, "Chuffing me off like a Jew. A Jew to Dachau, Auschwitz, Belsen. I began to talk like a Jew. I think I may well be a Jew.", she views her father as a Nazi and herself as a Jew to represent that she was in a oppressed relationship that her father is strictly controlling her. Living with her father, she feels like a prisoner that is trapped in a German concentration death camp. The usage of a unforgettable historical event exaggerates the tension and a sense of horror that she feels like the genocide of Jews. This world-known historical event reveals the hatred and victimization that she wants to communicate with her readers.

She also used tangible objects as similes, in the first stanza of this poem, "You do not do, you do not do Any more, black shoe In which I have lived like a foot For thirty years, poor and white, Barely daring to breath of Achoo". She refers herself as a foot that is stuck in a shoe, and because her life is always encased by a shoe which symbolizes her father's rule. This makes her never have a chance to experience the outside world and be exposed to the sun; moreover, she is suffocated in her father's rule. As Hughes, Plath uses simile to allow readers to form a mental image of comparison which would increase the understanding of her emotions.