"The slave Dream"

Temmi Adeyeni
AP English 3
Ms. Brown
The Slaves Dream by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
A sequence of images that appear involuntarily to the mind of somebody who is sleeping, often a mixture of real and imaginary characters, places, and events. Dreams, as defined in the Microsoft word dictionary. Dreams are known to be what human beings see and experience during the unconscious state of sleep. According to Hartmann, dreams may function like psychotherapy, by "making connections in a safe place" and allowing the dreamer to integrate thoughts that may be dissociated during waking life. This fact is connected with the poem The Slaves Dream, because the slave in the poem was using his dream as a safe haven from whatever troubles he was having. Through this, Longfellow reveals his purpose for writing this poem. He is communicating that his opinion about slaves is that they are getting treated very harshly. One way that he makes his purpose known is through his diction.

“Once more a king he strode; He saw once more his dark-eyed queen… a tear burst from the sleeper's lids… He did not feel the driver's whip,Nor the burning heat of day” (Longfellow). Through the dream, the slave was able to forget everything and he became a whole new person. He felt like he was now worth something. He was a king, who had his beautiful queen and children around him. He also felt like a man for the first time since he has been a slave. He was now the dominant one. He felt wanted and had a sense of affection. Someone was now there to support him and all the moves he makes. Longfellow says “ a tear burst from the sleeper's lids” , because the slave was wondering why he could not have this in his reality. It was making him sad that he couldn’t obtain this feeling in his real life. He uses the word “burst” because, he wants the reader to know that the slave has been holding back for so long and now he is at his breaking point. All his pain and painstaking labor had came through in this one burst. One can infer that they were being treated harshly, because the slave himself had to look internally for comfort. He had nothing and no one to hold on to on the outside. “ He did not feel the driver's whip, Nor the burning heat of day;” (Longfellow). This is exactly what he was trying to accomplish by having this dream. He became numb by this dream and all his struggles and painstaking labor seem to now have disappeared.

In conclusion, in writing this poem, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow lets the world know how he feels about how slaves were being treated in that era. He demonstrates this through the slave he wrote about in The Slaves Dream.
The slave uses his dreams to escape the harshness of the slave masters. He uses it as an escape route to revisiting his manhood. He used his dreams as a safe haven for his problems.