Poem Analysis Of Harlem, By Langston Hughes

The significance of the aforementioned dreams changes the overall outcome of future events that will transpire. For example, in Of Mice and Men, George is very cautious with his plans, as seen in “George was on guard immediately. ‘S’pose I do,’ he said. ‘What’s that to you?’ and “George said quickly, ‘Don’t tell nobody about

Langston Hughes was the most famous poet from Harlem, writing during the 1920’s and 1930’s. Hughes wanted to show the lives of the black community through his poems and the things they faced in America at that time like racism. He would compare the ways African American experience was different from the white Americans. At the time he was writing, slavery was over for sixty years already, but blacks were still treated unequally everyday. African Americans had a dream that was being held back from them, called a deferred dream. What is a dream deferred? Langston Hughes relates his sequence of poems, “Lenox Avenue Mural,” to this question. It is said that, “The “dream deferred” is the dream of African Americans: a dream of freedom, equality,

“What happens to a dream deferred?” In the poem “Dream Deferred”, by Langston Hughes; the novel Of Mice and Men, by John Steinbeck; and the play A Raisin in the Sun, by Lorraine Hansberry, it talks about what dreams are like and what happens to dreams. Langston Hughes is questioning what happens to dreams that are forgotten. John Steinbeck is telling a person to strive for his/her goals and to not forget or give up on dreams. In Hansberry’s opinion, she is implying that dreams can come true if a person tries hard, even if he/

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.

The speaker opens the poem by questioning, "What happens to a dream deferred?" (1). This single line instantly gives the reader an idea of what the poem is about. The first question produces curiosity in the reader--makes the reader want to find the answer to the question.

Langston Hughes’ poem, “Harlem” began with the question, “What happens to a dream deferred?” This allows us as readers to wonder what he may be trying to say, and so then at lines 6-11, he answers with a series of rhetorical questions as, “Does it stink like rotten meat? / Or crust and sugar over like a syrupy sweet? / Maybe it just sags / like a heavy load. /

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

Later in the poem, the dream in question is thought of as a "crusted over syrupy sweet" (8). Sweets are always a treat for anyone, but what if a syrupy sweet sits too long? It will

Langston opens his poem up with a rhetorical question, “what happens to a dream deferred?” (Line 1). This first line is crucial to the poem because the purpose of the poem is to answer this one question. A dream deferred is a dream that is put off or a dream that a person comes back to later to achieve.

Dreams are hopes that people hope to accomplish in their lifetime. When trying to achieve these goals, people are willing to do anything. But, what happens when a dream is deferred? A dream pushed aside can disappoint a person in the deepest way. It is likely to spread throughout their thoughts and becomes a burden. In the poem “Harlem,” Langston Hughes, through literary devices, introduce a strong theme through a short amount of language Hughes is asking what happens to a dream that is being put off.

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

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 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

Hughes’ intellectual use of structure through tone, similes, and spacing is what makes “Harlem” one for the ages. “What happens to a dream deferred?” (Hughes 236) Hughes begins this poem with a proactive yet innocuous question about dreams. It forces the reader to go outside the poem and contemplate what they would do without hope.

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