Reflection on "Writing About Visual Texts", "Montage of a Dream Deferred", and "Poem 288"

As I read the reading about visual texts, I found that I agreed with many of the claims provided by the author. For example, when the author writes, "our understanding of the world is, to a significant extent, influenced by the entities that produce the imagery we consume," I feel that this is true due to the fact that society today is highly influenced by image. Everyone has unique life experiences and emotions in which they can connect to the images they view. Visual images are very powerful because they can portray so many different meanings, which enhance the thinking/learning process by causing one to consider more than one way to perceive the image. Before reading these articles, I never realized how complex images are and how impactful they can be, but after reading the articles, the way I view images will change. In the "Montage of a Dream Deferred" by Langston Hughes, the images included provide a greater understanding to his purpose. What I interpreted from this visual poem is that Hughes' purpose was to inform the reader that when dreams are deferred, nothing good comes out of it, and your dream spoils and vanishes. The reason why I interpret this is because, first of all, Langston Hughes sets up the poem and the images as a magic show. Throughout the poem, he tries to answer his opening question: "what happens to a dream deferred?" Hughes uses what I consider to be grotesque examples of what may happen when a dream is deferred. For example, he compares a deferred dream to a "festering sore", "rotten meat", "sagging load of manure", and an exploding bomb. By comparing deferred dreams to these grotesque examples and by capturing these examples in images, the purpose that jumped at me while reading the poem suggested that a deferred dream is not a pleasant thing. Finally, the comparison to the exploding bomb at the end of the poem left the biggest impact on my perception of the purpose of the poem because the image in the last box is just an empty, dark area. By seeing that empty box and considering the setting of the poem's images (a magic show), the final impression that I get of a deferred dream is that when dreams are deferred, they simply vanish all together. In "Poem 288" by Emily Dickinson, the question being asked is whether you are nobody or not. The image provided is a Picasso-style image that is very abstract and reveals shapes of people that are somewhat hidden within the image. This poem struck me as ironic in a way, because the figures seen in the image are discussing that they are nobody, so I think that is why they are somewhat hidden in the image. However, all of the figures believe that they are each nobody, and so that makes them a group of people who believe the same thing, which makes them visible. The figures are scared to be seen, but they cannot be completely hidden. This reminds me of humanity as a whole because individuals feel that they are unique and no one else understands them, but in reality, the individuals in society are more alike than different. The fact that individuals in society cannot grasp this concept causes so many problems in society.