The Restrictions Of The Dream Deferred By Langston Hughes

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,

magine America with no rules, government, or any type of structure . This is thanks to Thomas Jefferson and the founding fathers for creating , The Declaration Of Independence . Although the Jefferson and the founding fathers anticipated a better country after the creation of the Declaration Of Independence , America has not fully fulfilled these hopeful ideals. However America has come a long way since then , we still have work to do as a nation .

Langston Hughes was a successful African-American poet of the Harlem renaissance in the 20th century. Hughes' had a simple and cultured writing style. "Harlem" is filled with rhythm, jazz, blues, imagery, and evokes vivid images within the mind. The poem focuses on what could happen to deferred dreams. Hughes' aim is to make it clear that if you postpone your dreams you might not get another chance to attain it--so take those dreams and run. Each question associates with negative effects of deferred dreams. The imagery from the poem causes the reader to be pulled in by the writer's words.

Hughes brings out such a strong message in this work that it is not just relevant to the year it was written (1938), but has an extremely strong purpose and voice today. Langston Hughes did not have the easiest life. One can see those struggles, especially through this poem. He was an African American author born in 1902, and raised by his grandmother in his early childhood. He then went to live with his

The Oxford English Dictionary describes the word “deferred” as to, “Put off (an action or event) to a later time; postpone.” (Murray, Bradley, Craigie, Onions 1). This is a good word to describe what can happen to the dreams of African Americans in Ameica. In “Harlem”, Hughes describes how African American’s dreams are often forced to take a backseat. This happens because African Americans are put at a disadvantage in this country and often need to work twice as hard to do the same as others who aren’t oppressed. Speaking of dreams being deferred, in the line “Maybe it just sags Like a heavy load” (Mays 1043, lines 9-10, Mays), Hughes describes the way that African Americans can feel hopeless because they are forced to put their dreams aside. Their dreams can even die because of the disadvantages they must overcome. In lines 1 and 2, Hughes writes, “Does it dry up Like a raisin in the sun?” (Mays 1043, line 1-2). Dreams dying is a very real thing and can happen to African Americans. The oppression they face in this so-called “home of the free” can cause their dreams to never be realized. The last line in the poem is very striking; “Or does it just explode?” (1043, line 11, Mays) In

The novel Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck, "A Dream Deferred" by Langston Hughes and "Hope" by Karen Hesse are three bodies of writing that share many similarities in how they use rhetoric to develop overarching themes. First, "A Dream Deferred" uses personification to get it's theme across. It states "What happens to a dream deferred? Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun? Or fester like a sore—And then run?"

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 epigraphy by Langston Hughes describes how dreams change after they had been put off. When dreams fail, it affects each person differently. The person may just give up on the dream completely, find a new way to reach the dream, change the situation so it may not be the dream but something similar, or it can destroy other dreams too. The Youngers were an African American family who lived on the south side of Chicago and barely scraped by with Walter’s job as a limousine driver. They all eagerly waited for the insurance money, produced after Walter’s dad passed away, to make their dreams come true. But when the check arrived, Walter gave most of the money to Willy Harris, a business partner, who ran off with the money when it was supposed to be invested in a liquor store.

The poem is very typical of Hughes’ subject matter and themes. This is because he usually writes about racial subjects such as equality and the average life of an African-American. Going so far as to say that most of his poems are racial in theme and treatment, derived from the life that he knows (“An Introduction to Langston Hughes.”). This poem does have the racial topic of equality for a couple of reasons. To begin with, the speaker talks about how people should see the world and the other people in it. Key word, should, because he then goes onto say, “That is my dream!” (Hughes l. 9). This is one reason why “Dream Variations” has a theme centered on how everyone wants to be treated equally. Because the speaker talks about how he wishes he was treated by the world. Along with the theme of equality the poem’s subject is the life of an average African-American. This is because he speaks of how he wants to dance “Dance! Whirl! Whirl! Till the white day is done” (Hughes ll. 12-13). Yet he cannot because he has to work, and he tries to make his work seem like dancing but he is still very tired at the end of the day. This shows the average life of an African-American because they had to work very hard in the early

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,

During the time period of this poem being published, America was still segregated and African Americans were still fighting to be seen as equal. Hughes starts off the poem with a question, “What happens to a dream deferred?” which questions what happens when you put off your dreams (172). Although the speaker does not refer to what they dream of in the poem, is clear that they are talking about what a dream feels like when you are limited in life. This poem helps show how limited African Americans were when trying to achieve their dreams and that the oppressed environment that they lived in. The dreams that they hoped to one day achieve were never going to be able to be reached because of how they were perceived in society. However, African Americans tried to achieve their dreams and find their place in the society that they lived in, but some still managed to find their dreams to “fester like a sore,” (172). Hughes writes this poem to help depict the visions, ambitions, and frustrations that African Americans felt when trying to make their place in the world. In this poem, a play is taken from one of the lines in the poem that refers to an African American family’s dreams drying up, “like a raisin in the sun,” (172). During these times of struggle, African Americans began to continue to be

First of all, it’s a poem. With a lot of questions. Its central question, however, is "what happens to a dream deferred?" meaning basically "what happens when your dreams don’t come true?" only Hughes’s version sounds better. He poses a couple of graphic suggestions: do the dreams dry, fester, run, stink, crust, sugar, sag, or explode? If we make like kindergarteners and play a little game of, "what doesn’t belong," the word explode fits the bill. While the other verbs deal with decay, waste, or extinction, explode is considerably more active, more powerful. No wonder Hughes chose to use it

“A Dream Deferred” by, Langston Hughes is a great masterpiece in my vision; he conducts imagery in his work and simple diction. “Does it stink like rotten meat? Or crust and sugar over like a syrupy sweet?” I felt Mr.Hughes was questioning whether or not the dream expires and becomes useless, or if the dream gets a little crusty, but still sweet. Mr.Hughes also implies that you can either have sweet dream, or hold on to something that no longer serves you, in your journey through life.

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's poem "Dream Deferred" is basically about what happens to dreams when they are put on hold. Hughes probably intended for the poem to focus on the dreams of African-American in particular. However, it is just as easy to read the poem as being about dreams in general and what happens when people postpone making them come true. What I got from the poem was that the longer you put your dreams on hold, the more the dreams will change and the less likely they will come true.