According to Webster's online dictionary the definition of the word “dream” as “a series of thoughts, images, or emotions …”. With this definition, it is easy to see that all 7,125 billion people who make up the population of the world would have their own dream of what they want to do with their life. People find it amazing that everyone in the world can have their own dream, but what most people choose to ignore is the fact that most of these dreams don't come true. These dreams go into a state of deferment. Langston Hugh was able to put the idea of what might happen to a dream after it gets deferred into words. His poem goes as follows: “What happens to a dream deferred? Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun? Or fester like a sore and …show more content…
First of all, it's important to know who Mama is. She is a 60-year-old black woman who is the mother of Walter and Beneatha. Her appearance is that she is a strong woman who has a certain grace and beauty about here. But, it is easy to see in her appearance that she has adjusted to many things in life, and overcome many more challenges.
What has kept her above water for many years is her wit and her faith. Her dream was to always buy a nice house where she everyone could have their own beds and be able to have a garden of her own. She had to defer this dream for years living in a two bedroom apartment with her daughter and her son's family. She never had the money to make her dream come try until she got the insurance check after her husband died. She wanted this house not just for her but so she could impact the life of her family. She is able to see how it will even impact Travis. She says to Travis, “Now when you say your prayers tonight, you thank God and your grandfather because it was him who gave you the house - in his way” (II.I). Travis will now be able to not worry about having a house for his family and will be able to financially support whatever he wants to be someday. Mama's dreams may have been deferred but she always kept them close and because she kept them close she was able to achieve
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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?” As Lorraine Hansberry knew, this poem ties into her story so well that she actually named “A Raisin in the sun after it. In the story, all of Lorraine's character go through struggles and have to sacrifice their dreams, but three dreams in particle were the most important. The most important dreams that got differed where those of Walter’s, Mama’s and Beneatha. Walter's dream of owning his own liquor store was stolen from him when the money he gave to one of his business partners was stolen. Mama’s dream of owning a house was ultimately accomplished but her dream was put off for years because she had a family that needed to come first. Finally, Beneatha dream was to become a doctor, but when the money that Mama was going to put towards her dream was stolen Beneatha gave up her dream. These dreams played key roles within the story and If these dreams became accomplished the lives of the people in the story would have been completely different. With that being said, Lorraine Hansberry’s story does a fantastic job of showing what happens to a dream deferred like talked about in Langston Hughes
Mama is a Christian and was clearly bothered by the fact that her daughter Beneatha did not believe in God. The other struggle comes with Walter’s obsession for money using his rich-quicks schemes. She entrusted Walter with the $6,500 that he later completely loses. In the end she is happy with Walter’s better decisions at the end, of the play.
In Langston Hughes’ poem “Harlem,” he discusses the idea of unfulfilled dreams and their plausible outcomes using symbolism and imagery. He initially describes a “deferred” dream as a sun-dried raisin, depicting the dream originally as a fresh grape that now has dried up and “turned black” (Jemie 63). This idea provides Lorraine Hansberry’s play A Raisin in the Sun with its basic foundation, for it is a play about a house full of unfulfilled dreams. As the poem goes on, Hughes depicts the idea of a deferred dream as something rotten or gone bad. According to Onwuchekwa Jemie, this may be an allusion to the American Dream and its empty promises (Jemie 64).
“Everyone always says that anything is possible, but some things in life just can’t be reached. Sometimes your dreams just can’t be achieved.” (Carl Johnson) All humans living in America have dreams. These could all easily be described as the American Dream. The American Dream can frequently change from time to time due to the time period. It can also change due to the age of the person at hand. Children grow up having these dreams, but who knows how long these dreams will last. Some elderly people develop new dreams or are still chasing to fulfill the dreams they’ve had since they were much younger. These dreams are all things that people want and desire to have. Some of these dreams are unrealistic and could never happen.
In the Southside of Chicago in the 1950’s, the Youngers are a typical poverty stricken family that works hard to be able to rise out of poverty. Each family member has a different dream of being able to reach this goal. Mama has the dream of owning her own house, Walter wants to be able to open a liquor store, Beneatha wants to go to school to become a doctor, and Ruth wants to move out of their current apartment. In the play A Raisin in the Sun, Lorraine Hansberry shows the effect of a deferred dream in Walter Lee’s character.
Dreams, for some people rather then being significant events or goals to be reached in
Mama, a member of the oldest generation of the family, reveals that the suffering encountered throughout the story is nothing new, and rather has been part of Harlem for as far back as we can trace. Mama realized the inevitability of suffering in Harlem, knowing all too well of "the darkness outside", yet aimed to have a full and meaningful life despite this suffering (131). In order to do this, she turned to the suffering of her family, particularly her husband’s suffering over the death of his brother. Mama reveals just how much she did to prevent suffering within her home in her last conversation with the narrator. One thing that she did in particular was that she gave her husband a shoulder to cry on: “I know you never saw your Daddy
In the book “A Raisin in the Sun” by Lorraine Hansberry, there were characters whose dreams were stated, some of which were shattered by greed and misfortune and others which would eventually come to be true. The first dream that came about was Walter’s dream of one day owning and maintaining a liquor store. He would do anything to attempt to get his dream to come true, but his mama wanted anything but that to happen. His mama had a dream of her own though, she dreamed of one day owning her own house, where her whole family could stay comfortably. She dreamed this because in the apartment that she resided in was too small, and dumpy, as Ruth called it. Her grandson Travis had to sleep on the couch, and all
In Langston Hughes’ poem, the author gives us vivid examples of how dreams get lost in the weariness of everyday life. The author uses words like dry, fester, rot, and stink, to give us a picture of how something that was originally intended for good, could end up in defeat. Throughout the play, I was able to feel how each character seemed to have their dreams that fell apart as the story went on. I believe the central theme of the play has everything to do with the pain each character goes thru after losing control of the plans they had in mind. I will attempt to break down each character’s dream and how they each fell apart as the play went on.
A dream is a hope, a wish, and an aspiration. Young people have dreams about what they want to be when they grow up. Parents have dreams for their children's future. Not all of these dreams come true at the desired moment - these dreams are postponed or "deferred". A deferred dream is put on the "back burner of life"(Jemie 219), and it matures to its full potential, and is waiting when you are "ready to pursue it"(Jemie 219). It is assumed that the deferred event, though later than hoped for, will eventually come true.
Langston Hughes named this poem after the neighborhood that became the epicenter of the Renaissance. In the first stanza, Hughes wants to know “What happened to a deferred dream?”(Hughes 1). In the second stanza, he uses a raisin as an image for people loosing the realization in their dreams. “Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun?”(Hughes 2). The author is going into very deep thought while writing this poem to ensure that his readers will understand his point of view. Hughes is using the question to make readers compare their life to the simple things like a sore
The epigraph to Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun, there is a poem by Langston Hughes titled: “What happens to a dream deferred?” I believe the reason why Hansberry chose this particular poem as the epigraph to her play to be a form of foreshadowing and metaphor for the Younger family. In Hughes’s poem, there are four potential outcomes for when a raisin is left in the sun. It could fester like a sore and then run. A could smell like rotten meat. It could crust and sugar over. Or does it explode? Each of these potential outcomes could even be a direct parallel to each of the Youngers’ dreams, particularly Walter’s.
Oprah Winfrey once said, “The best thing about dreams is that fleeting moment, when you are between asleep and awake, when you don't know the difference between reality and fantasy, when for just that one moment you feel with your entire soul that the dream is reality, and it really happened.” But, what actually is a dream and what do dreams really have to do with one’s everyday life? In essence, a dream is a series of mental images and emotions occurring during slumber. Dreams can also deal with one’s personal aspirations, goals, ambitions, and even one’s emotions, such as love and hardship. However, dreams can also give rise to uneasy and terrible emotions; these dreams are essentially known as nightmares. In today’s society, the concept
“Check coming today?” The Life Insurance check that Mama will soon be receiving is the source of all the dreams in the Younger family. A major argument that Lorraine Hansberry makes in her play A Raisin in the Sun is the importance of dreams. Dreams are what each member of the Younger family is driven by. Mama wants to have her own home in a nice part of town; she does not want her children growing up in a place with rats. Walter wants to have a successful business so he can surpass the poverty that has plagued his family. And Beneatha wants to get a good education, become a doctor, and marry a nice man. Dreams are especially important to the Younger family as they come from a poverty laden family and desire to live the “American Dream.”
In the poem “Harlem,” by Langston Hughes, he uses a simile “Does it dry up - like a raisin in the sun?" (Line 2-3) Using this simile, he is expressing that dreaming can be good or bad. A raisin is a grape that has been dried out by the sun. Hughes is making known that dreams can suck the life out of a person, mentally drying them out. However, a raisin is not automatically bad. When the grape is dried out by the sun it turns the grape into a raisin, a sweet and delightful fruit which can furnish life when eaten. A dream can be just like a raisin. A person may feed off the idea of the dream in order to strive and strive to achieve the dream.
The meaning of, "A Dream Deferred," is that no one really knows what happens to dreams that are not fulfilled. The poem starts with the line, "What happens to a dream deferred?" and this plainly asks what happens to dreams that have not been paid attention to. The next line in the poem is, "Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun or fester like a sore and then run?" meaning does a dream simply wither away until it is no longer prevalent, or does it sit and stew until it becomes unbearable enough that it is fulfilled out of convenience. The following stanza is, "Does it stink like rotten meat? Or crust and sugar over like a syrupy sweet." This means that dreams could possibly be attainable, but people put them on the figurative back burner making them "rot" and "smell" like a constant reminder. A scholarly review written by Marie Rose Napierkowski proves my point by saying, "With the smell of rotten meat, Hughes suggests that dreams deferred will pester one