Explication Of Harlem By Langston Hughes

during this time he quickly became a part of the Harlem Renaissance. Four years later,

Take a time machine back to one of the most culturally-rich times in history, the Modern Age. More specifically, set your destination to northern Manhattan in the early 20s. When you step onto those bustling streets, you’ll find yourself swept up in the Harlem Renaissance. The contemporary writers you are surrounded by are legends such as Langston Hughes and W. E. B. DuBois, and the contemporary musicians you may hear at a local nightclub include some of the greatest in jazz history, including Thelonious Monk, Nat King Cole, Charlie Parker, Duke Ellington. When you’re tired of dancing all night, take your time machine back to 2017, and what you’ll find is that writers and musicians are still

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.

James Mercer Langston Hughes was one of the greatest artists of the Harlem Renaissance. Langston Hughes was a very well renounced American poet, social activist, novelist, playwright, and columnist. Born on February 1, 1902 in Joplin, Missouri, James Mercer Langston Hughes was the great-great-grandson of Charles Henry Langston ("Langston Hughes Biography"). Charles Henry Langston was the brother of the first African American to be elected to public office, John Mercer Langston. He attended school in Cleveland, Ohio. While attending Central High School, James Mercer Langston Hughes began writing poetry in the eighth grade. However, he was discouraged by his father who thought James Mercer Langston Hughes should pursue a more practical career ("Langston Hughes Biography").

In “Harlem”, by Langston Hughes, he demonstrates that obstacles and disillusionment can prevent someone from achieving his or her dreams. Hughes tells about a dream that has been put off by obstacles, and how it stays with someone, almost haunting them. He shows this in the second stanza, where he says,”It festers like a sore-- and then runs”(Hughes). The dream is like a festering and infected sore, that runs and oozes. This relates to the theme of the poem because the obstacles defer the dream, turning it into a festering sore, and showing that a deferred dream becomes rotten and nasty. This explains the statement by showing if the dream is prevented by an obstacle,

It is no exaggeration to note that the African American experience has always been rife with brutality, racism, and prejudice. During the early nineteenth century racial tensions were high as life for black people became increasingly dangerous in the South. Due to Jim Crow laws and lynching’s, the North became a far better alternative for the black people living in the South at the time. In fact, there were 3,409 black lynching’s in the United States between the years of 1882 and 1940. And, as a result of the Jim Crow laws and violent racial prejudice, people of color left the South in droves and moved to the North. This mass movement of people is called the Great Migration. One of the most popular places African Americans moved to was

The poem that was my favorite was “Harlem” by Langston Hughes because it brought back memories of going to visit my Grandma in Harlem. “Does it stink like rotten meat?” (Langston, 2012, p. 409). That line means so much to me because the smell of Harlem is unique.

A symbol is “a visible object or action that suggests some further meaning in addition to itself” (Kennedy, 683). In literature, a symbol has many layers of meaning if it is not a conventional symbol, is often concealed at first, and is “representative of several other aspects, concepts or traits than those that are visible in the literal translation alone” (literary-devices.com). But, as a reader, we can miss the value of a symbol is we think it can mean anything we want it to represent (Kennedy, 683). A literary symbol is usually not something abstract and terms such as truth, love, death, and justice cannot work as symbols unless they are personified (Kennedy, 685).

This poem is a great representation of how African Americans stayed strong during the toughest times of their

Derissa Crawford Professor Kobeleva English 1102 6 March 2015 To Dream or Not To Dream Life in the early 20th century was quite the very different for African Americans in America compared to now. It was a time when African Americans did not have all the same opportunities. In the early 20th century Africans Americans could either believe in a dream or just accept life as it was. “Dreams” and “Harlem” by Langston Hughes are two poem’s that focus on dreams; however, the poems both take two different take towards dreams, the poem “Dreams” is conveying that life is hard without dreams, while “Harlem” is questioning what happens when a person’s dreams are postponed.

This essay is going to be talking about a poem called Dream Deferred. I selected this poem, since I liked the wording of it and what Hughes was writing it about. The title to me tells me that a dream can always disappear and that some dreams can fall. My first impression of this poem was wow! The reason I liked the poem was because the wording he used. This poem before I researched about, I thought it meant that someone has a dream and that their dream has been vanished. This poem's tone is negative, because in one part he's talking about African Americans and how they don't have freedom. The poem has to do with African families and how their having to face prejudice and economic hardship (GradeSaver 2). People make decision everyday and they get ruined or don’t happen. In “Dreams” by Langston Hughes he shows that everyone has dreams and dreams die.

If we were to analyse the poem “Harlem” by Langston Hughes in its entirety, we are able to see that Hughes doesn't only speak about dreams being “deferred” but instead about the importance of not letting a dream subside. Hughes concludes by stating “Or does it explode?” meaning that often, goals that once filled someone’s mind with hope later are taken for granted and no longer will they be recognized, Furthermore, looking at the word “explode” we are able rationalize that nothing is able to come back from an explosion, hughes strategically places this in his poem to metaphorically get the message across that how cruel and harsh we are to have the ability to throw away the greatest “lemon” and not “juice it” and take away the greatest of its

In the poem “Harlem” by Langston Hughes, Hughes discusses the fate of the American dream and more specifically, he questions us about the destiny of the dream that never gets realized. He wonders whether it explodes violently or if it just dries up. Forty years later, Tony Kushner explored the fate of the suppressed, exploding dream in “Angels in America” through the character of Joseph Porter Pitt as he struggles to cope with his own repressed, but surfacing homosexuality, while also balancing societal and religious perspectives that restrain his true dreams. Furthermore, Joseph’s true self has been repressed deep into his mind and covered with conservative opinions, a fraudulent marriage, and religious manipulation. All of which, are

“What happens to a dream deferred?” Langston Hughes provokes in the first line of his poem “Harlem,”. Since the dawn of time, people have had dreams, ambitions, and goals on how they want to live their lives. Human beings have always wondered what their purpose is, and how they should fulfill it. I, like those before me, am no different in that sense. I am a girl that has the heart of a child and has dreams that soar beyond the conceivable stars. Ever since I was young, I allowed myself to dream as high as I could, and I believed that if I set my mind to a task I could complete it. Now I am older and have more strength alongside the ambition to chase these goals until I physically cannot go on. However, I have found throughout my teenage years that while your brain may be set on one path, life has a tendency to throw obstacles at you that may get in the way of the plans you had for yourself. Sometimes there will be circumstances in life that you cannot avoid or alter, as it is out of your control. In Langston Hughes’s poem “Harlem,” the persona speaks of dreams that were deferred, and I can relate to this concept strongly as I have had to put a dream of my own on hold in the past.

Maya Angelou once said. “there is a kind of strength that I almost frightening in black women. It’s as if a steel rod runs right through the head down to the feet. Lorrain Hansberry was a play writer and activist doing her time. She was not only a very know black play writer she was the youngest American to win a New York Critics Circle award. She named this play after the poem “Harlem” sometimes called “Dream Deferred” written by Harlem Renaissance poet Langston Hughes. The story is about a family in Chicago in the 1950’s. That is about to get 10,000 dollars from insurance. The family all want to use the money for their dreams and to get out of the financial burden that they are in. The end of the story the family see’s their future as uncertain and dangerous and they believe that they will be stronger if they stick together as a family and not have different dreams any longer.