Dreams Deferred

A detailed Summary of Dreams Deferred

The poem, "A Dream Deferred," by Langston Hughes, accurately and descriptively portrays the attitudes of African American people during the mid 1900's. Hughes expresses the possible responses of African Americans to their dreams being deferred by means of metaphors and similes.

The first thing the reader needs to do to understand this poem is find out what a dream deferred means. Deferred means to put something off or to postpone it. In this poem, Hughes asks the question, and then proceeds to attempt an answer for himself with more questions. The dreams of the blacks in the 1900's were things such as social, economic, and educational equality, basic civil rights. Unfortunately, the obstacle of racism stood in the way of achieving these goals. However, Hughes poem does not have to be limited to the dreams of African Americans, but any dreams of all people everywhere.

In the first of Hughes' possible answers, he asks, "Does it dry up/ like a raisin in the sun?" The reader needs to think about what exactly raisins are: grapes that shrivel and dry out after a period of time in the sun. With this knowledge, the reader thinks about how to interpret the meaning of this simile. Hughes implies that the dream, like

"Does it stink like rotten meat?" Another not so charming line gives the image of a dream being a piece of old, rotten meat. Meat becomes rotten when it is not cooked in a good amount of time, concluding that the dream has been forgotten, or put off for too long that it rots. When meat rots there is no way to go back and regain its freshness; it must be thrown away. By this Hughes is saying that if dreams are deferred for too long, they will also have to be thrown away.

Langston Hughes' "A Dream Deferred" has often been found under the title, "Harlem: A Dream Deferred," because it speaks about the black community of Harlem's dreams and their frustration at not gaining economic and social equality. However, if an individual should read this poem not knowing about its background they could conclude that it was meant for all types of dreams that are deferred. Because of Hughes' usage of metaphors and similes, "A Dream Deferred" reaches a wide range of audiences and provokes critical examination of his similes.

In the last line of the poem, Hughes gives a powerful image of the dream being deferred, asking, "... does it explode?" When thinking of an explosion, one might think of a bomb. Another picture could be of too

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Approximate Word count = 828
Approximate Pages = 3 (250 words per page double spaced)

Category: English

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Dreams Deferred

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