Dream Intired By Langston Hughes, Dreams And Dream Deferred

The only major shift that occurs in Dreams Deferred, happens on the last line of the poem. Hughes compares dreams to other things using similes. These similes are not instantaneous, they happen and worsen over time. i.e(Does it dry up/like a raisin in the sun?/Or fester like a sore). But on the last line, he compares dreams deferring to something that doesn’t need time. An

Can you imagine having a talent that you have been waiting so long to show an audience? The speaker in this poem tells the audience how it feels. In Langston Hughes short poem Harlem the speaker quizzes the reader on what happens when a dream is postponed. The tone of the poem is informative, curious and exciting. The speaker asks the reader short, simple metaphorical questions pertaining to the possible end results of a dream postponed. The poem title says a lot about the tone and the dream the speaker is referring to, which is the American Dream blacks pursued in the Harlem Renaissance.

In this poem Hughes employs metaphors in comparing the beauty of those different objects; night to faces, stars to eyes, and sun to souls.

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

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.

In our journey through life, we all have certain expectations of how we would like our lives to be. All of us strive to reach a certain level of self-actulization and acceptance. It could thus be said that all of us live a dream. Some of these individual dreams inevitably become the collective dream of many people. In "Harlem (A Dream Deferred)", Langston Hughes makes use of symbolism as well as powerful sensory imagery to show us the emotions that he and his people go through in their quest for freedom and equality. By using questions he builds the poem towards an exciting climax.

In “Dream Deferred” it very helps one to see that dream are very important because without a dream then it can become difficult to see what the point of living life. Langston

Dreams can be either a blessing or a curse. Dreams, driving people everywhere to work their hardest and be the best they can be so maybe one day they may achieve it. Dreams have to ability to eat out of the people’s souls keeping people wondering if they dream may ever happen after always being set aside. The poem “Harlem, A Dream Deferred” by Langston Hughes perfectly describes the agony of postponed dreams. In the story A Raisin in the Sun by Lorraine Hansberry Walter Lee Younger’s dream to own a liquor store takes on the appearance of images described in “Harlem, A Dream Deferred” such as rotten meat and then starts to crust and sugar over like a syrupy sweet, then finally after being thrown aside for so long the dream may explode.

“What happens to a dream deferred? Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun? Or faster like a sore and then run? Does it stink like rotten meat? Or crust and sugar over like a syrupy sweet? Maybe it sags like a heavy load. Or does it explode”. (Langston Hughes, Harlem)

Langston Hughes’s arguably most famous poem “Harlem” displays his disillusionment with the neighborhood at its very worst. Written in 1951,well after the hey-day of the Harlem Renaissance, “Harlem” addresses the lack of access to the American Dream for African Americans. Bremer recognizes this theme and writes, “In their Harlem home, dreams were rooted in the dirt and grit of physical and communal life- and could be ruined there... Langston Hughes would dramatize in his most famous poem, by figuring forth a ‘dream deferred’”(53). The poem asks many questions regarding the central query: “What happens to a dream deferred”?

In the poem “Dream Deferred” (1951) by Langston Hughes, he proposes some of the positive and undesirable effects of putting a dream on hold, through powerful imagery. It seems he himself does not exactly understand what happens when a dream is “deferred”, or he has not yet experienced it. Through a series of questions and rhymes, he gives ideas on what an aspiration becomes when it is forgotten or put aside to take care of other things. Each line is introduced with a question except for the fifth line, which still begins with a “maybe”, showing the doubt the speaker has about this dream that is left to the side. Every line comes with a certain amount of confusion and uncertainty.

The poem I’m using is “Dreams Deferred” by Langston Hughes. I chose this poem because both it and the book use the theme of dreams not being a reality. Lennie wants to tend his rabbits, and unlikely dream given he’ll probably kill all the rabbits he gets. George wants to get married, settle down and have a family, but he is in his forties, not likely to get married and have kids, and the time period makes it almost impossible for George, a migrant worker, to buy a ranch. Hughes ponders what happens to a dream that has been put off, and so does Lennie. Lennie always asks George to repeat the dream over and over again so it isn’t left behind and forgotten. Some of the men has also abandoned their dreams, like Curly’s wife, she wanted to become

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

As you read further into the poem it allows you to develop a clearer understanding of what Hughes is trying to express in the poem. It is stated that the dream may "crust and sugar over… like a syrupy sweet? He is stating that by not using or putting the dream into use had formed into crust, which is that hard material that is no longer useful because it is no longer pliable. The dream forced to sit idle hardens into an unusable substance of thoughts that have separated themselves from the goals and formed idle destructive thoughts that are crusted over with despair, doubt, anger, and hatred.

In the poem a Dream Deferred, many similes are sprinkled throughout the poem. All of them have one thing in common, they attempt to complete the frightening task of describing a dream deferred. The author compares a deserted dream with numerous things from a raisin in the sun to a stinky piece of rotten meat. In each line, Hughes comes up with a creative way to illustrate the different forms of a dream and what can happen to them. At the beginning of the poem, Hughes ignites the poem with a rhetorical question asking what could be the fate of a dream deferred.