Dream Deferred

The book shares the same negative views about dreams with the poem “To a Mouse”, by Robert Burns. The poem tells the story of a mouse who has planned for survival through the winter, but his plans were ruined by a farmer who was plowing his field leaving the mouse frightened and fearing for the future. The seventh stanza includes these lines “The best laid schemes of mice and men, go oft astray, and leave us nought but grief and pain to rend our day” (Burns “To a Mouse”). This quote illustrates the fact that both the plans of mice and men will fail leaving them unhappy. The author Robert burns shows in “To a Mouse” his negative opinion directed towards achieving dreams.

One of Hughes most famous poems, “Harlem(Dream Deferred)” had a great impact by posing lots of questioning. According to critic Tom Hanson, this poem is just that simple because it gives a bunch of undesirable answers to the same question, “What happens to a dream deferred?” Hanson also says how this poem refers almost completely to an unsolved problem (Hanson, Harlem). The poem gives four rather unpleasant interrogatives and one declarative answer followed by the sixth possibility, “Or does it explode?” which is supposed to be a question to make a reader really think. There are several ways to interpret the meaning of the final line, and the most sensible explanation is, the African American community is “deferring dreams” and in doing so their dreams explode in terms of the chance to act is gone. Some may say Hughes presented an unattractive view

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).

We all go through the “dream stage”, but is it so that they are even meant to come across our minds during our slumber? Dreams are simply desires that certain people have a big hope to one day to actually experience their destinies and thoughts. Although reveries are recurrent, Langston Hughes and Zora Neale Hurston vividly contrasts the type of dreams people have and how they accomplish them. The determination in the 1920s set off success in the African American culture leading people to look past the limit and keep going. In “Freedom’s Plow” , Hughes believes dreams are set and fulfilled through unity, but on the other side of the grass Zora Neale Hurston in her piece, “Their Eyes Were Watching God”, she perceives that dreams are asymmetrical and are not

"Does it dry up/like a raisin in the sun?" (2-3). suggest that a postponed dream will eventually be forgotten or fizzled out. The image of a raisin stimulates the reader's sight and taste senses. The dream is like a sweet grape which is fresh and new. If you set that grape aside (in hopes of coming back to it later) it most likely will be bitter, dried out, kaput, and

What does happen to a dream deferred? Immediately, Langston Hughes allows the reader to think of dreams of his or her own in Harlem. Maybe they wish they were a doctor, lawyer, poet, or professional athlete. “What if I had just tried that much harder?” or “What if I would have been more focused?” These are ways that Hughes is known for evoking participation from his reader. As seen in Harlem, the repeated question asking must elicit response from the reader. Without reading line two, the reader is already thinking about his or her dream deferred. What would that have dream

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.

It gives us an example of the resentment that is growing. People are getting more inflamed emotionally, just like the wound gets worse if not treated. It draws a clear parallel between people's emotions and the images of the sore. Just as an untreated sore will not heal, but get more infected, a deferred dream will not go away, but become more intense. A wound that gets worse will eventually start to smell bad. Hughes compares this to rotten meat. "Does it stink like rotten meat?" This image creates the idea that unrealized dreams will bring out the worst in men. It also means that for some the realization of their dreams will become less attractive.

Does a dream deferred, "stink like rotten meat" (6)? To imagine a dream that is stinking like rotten meat is disgusting. What once was a beautiful, tender filet has wasted away into a piece of stinking rotten meat. The meat is still edible but could probably make one very sick if not be deadly. So to look at the dream as if it is meat, if the dream is not ‘eaten' or ‘prepared' then it could just sit there and rot over and become of no use to anyone.

The man recognizes how easy it is to surrender to the mirage of good dreams, where the richness of color and variety of detail provides a dangerous contrast to the grey monotony of both his and his son’s reality. Often, he awakens “in the black and freezing waste out of softly colored worlds of human love, the songs of birds, the sun,” (272). Those dreams are an invitation to rest in some nonexistent land. The man recognizes this as a dangerous temptation so he forces himself to wake up and face the cruel world rather than deteriorate in a world that no longer exists. His philosophy is that “the right dreams for a man in peril were dreams of peril and all else was the call of languor and of death.” (18). Only bad dreams belong in his mind because all good dreams are a reminder of valuable days that cannot be lived

Launching a new company can carry a barrage of emotions, experience and exposure. Along with the feel good and excitement lies the realism that your company has two choices, one is to be a successful startup will or could potentially land in the history books. Secondly, it could be an absolute failure, it may very well land in the history books but more so due to its notoriety. In a Dream Deferred, Monique Maddy gives a glimpse on her experiences and lessons from launching a technology company in an emerging market. Monique is very candid and perhaps still a bit resentful in seeing how her company was doomed by inexperience, bureaucracy, autocracy and “do-good” investors. Still the experiences of Adesemi rise and fall do not

Good job on your analysis. Like you, I quite enjoy the vivid imagery that Hughes used throughout this poem. He first compares a deferred dream like a raisin being dried up in the sun which highlights how a dream can start out fresh and vibrant but eventually decay away if it is constantly being postponed (Hughes). He then states that a forgotten dream can "...fester like a sore" (Hughes). This in effect highlights how a delay dream can eventually be damaging to us. The phrase "and then run" gives off the vibe that this sore has pus in it, which can eventually infect us. This infection, is the infection that the deferred dream inflict upon our mental state eventually causing our sore to become a painful injury. The poet then ask if it

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

I believe that ‘deferred’ is obviously a big word when it comes to the meaning of the poem. It means to postpone, so the author is describing all of the possibilities that could happen if a dream was postponed or delayed. Another word that really helps with the meaning of the poem is ‘sag’. One of the definitions of sag specifically is, “sink, subside, or bulge downward under weight or pressure or through lack of strength.” This could be the most understandable comparison because when you think of a deferred dream, it’s something that seems to gradually start sinking or going away. In addition, “pressure or through lack of strength” is a big meaning towards it because many dreams are deferred due to that exactly. The last word that comes with