What effect does hughes achieve by repeating the phrase "does it" in "harlem"? short words and hard consonants create a sense of angry uncertainty. short words and questions demonstrate hughes's confidence. the repetition creates a sense of peace and serenity for the reader. the repetition highlights hughes’s feelings of self-respect.

Hughes was born in 1902 in Joplin, Missouri, a descendant of noticeable abolitionists. His racial heritage was a mix of Indian, African, and French. Langston Hughes was an American poet, essayist, playwright, and short story writer. He is still considered one of the most distinguished contributors to American literature in the 20th century. He rose to fame during the Harlem Renaissance and continued to produce experimental and groundbreaking work for the next several decades. Hughes was known for vocalizing the concerns of working-class African Americans. His work was deeply influenced by jazz, and he often wrote in a simple and straightforward fashion, sometimes even using the vernacular.

Hughes asserts that he writes about racial issues. He writes about racial problems because for the black, everything in America is a racial question. To do else is to reject that sense of identity and to reject that sense of identity is to say that you don’t want to be a Negro poet or a Negro novelist or a Negro musician or Negro dramatist.

Hughes wrote "Harlem" in 1951, and it addresses one of his most common themes : the limitations of the American Dream for African Americans. The poem has eleven short lines in four stanzas, and all but one line are questions.

Here we have the poem for analysis:

What happens to a dream deferred?

      Does it dry up

      like a raisin in the sun?

     Or fester like a sore—

     And then run?

    Does it stink like rotten meat?

     Or crust and sugar over—

     like a syrupy sweet?

     Maybe it just sags

     like a heavy load.

     Or does it explode?

By repeating the questions "does it" Hughes achieves:

Short words and hard consonants create a sense of angry uncertainty