I prefer cinnamint.

First things first: to "defer" is to put off.

Also, I want to get the "Or crust and sugar over--/like a syrupy sweet?" out of the way while I still have some sense of its meaning. I believe the consensus we reached in class was that the speaker implies a state in which the dream is deferred because it has been "sugarcoated." This barrier of glorified vision is particularly deceptive because of its sweetness. The speaker longs so deeply to fulfill his quest that he gradually loses his faith in his ability to succeed. The dream becomes more and more a dream and less and less an actual goal.

Then, we have the ever-so-redundant similes. "Like a raisin in the sun," "like a sore," "like rotten meat," and "like a syrupy sweet," all modify this deferred dream. It gets old and shrinks. It festers. It encompasses the dreamer's being.

Finally, there's the metaphor: the explosion.

I saw this as the all-or-nothing moment. I think we decided ultimately in class that the clearly-important-because-it's-italicized "Or does it explode?" was an expression of fear that the dream would explode in a whirlwind of violence. After some thought, though, I'm more inclined to believe that it's an expression of a different sort of trepidation. He has that nervous feeling that erupts right before a big event, when one knows he or she is about to become either very happy or very sad. This "explosion" could set things right, or it could prove to be a disaster of epic proportions.