If you want anything in life, it is important to go out and get it rather than waiting around for it to come to you or settling for less than what you what. Settling for something less than your dreams will cause unhappiness and mediocracy. In Langston Hughes’, A Dream Deferred, the speaker contemplates what happens to a dream when it goes unachieved. Langston Hughes uses diction, simile and stanza form to represent the idea that a delayed dream discourages and breaks down the human spirit. After the poem opens up with “What happens to a dream deferred?”, Hughes then provides possible answers to his question through the use of simile and diction. The speaker of the poem uses simile to compare a dream deferred to a dried up raisin, “Does it …show more content…
He associates a postponed dream with rotten meat in line 6, “Does it stink like rotten meat?”(6). The use of the word “rotten” in that line immediately puts the image of something unpleasant in your head. Hughes successfully communicates the idea that a dream or aspiration that goes unbothered undergoes decay eventually wastes away. Being able to dream in life is one the most important aspects of a person's mind and being forced to abandon that puts a damper on the human spirit. The diction of lines 9 and 10, “Maybe it just sags/like a heavy load.”(9-10), shows a tone of decline. The verb “sags” is immediately related to deflation and decline. The use of the word “sag” emphasizes the way in which an interrupted goal occasionally strains and weighs don a person's will to persevere. According to its definition, “load” may mean “something that weighs down the mind or spirits.” Following the mood created by “sag,” “load” in line 10 reinforces the thought of discouragement, the idea that intense pursuit of a goal leads to physical and mental exhaustion. Therefore, an unrealized dream undoubtedly has the power to break down a person's
If one thinks about it, a raisin was once a grape. Grapes are full of juice while a raisin is dry. Hughes uses a raisin to compare a dream deferred because just like a raisin was once a grape a dream deferred was a dream but now one must wait. Hughes says, “Or fester like a sore---/ And then run?” (4-5).
James Langston Hughes was born on February 1, 1902, in Joplin, Missouri. He was named after his father, but it was later shortened to just Langston Hughes. He was the only child of James and Carrie Hughes. His family was never happy so he was a lonely youth. The reasons for their unhappiness had as much to do with the color of their skin and the society into which they had been born as they did with their opposite personalities. They were victims of white attitudes and discriminatory laws. They moved to Oklahoma in the late 1890s. Although the institution of slavery was officially abolished racial discrimination and segregation persisted.
Langston Hughes was a large influence on the African-American population of America. Some of the ways he did this was how his poetry influenced Martin Luther King Jr. and the Harlem Renaissance. These caused the civil rights movement that resulted in African-Americans getting the rights that they deserved in the United States. Hughes was born in 1902 in Joplin, Missouri. His parents divorced when he was young and his grandmother raised him. She got him into literature and education; she was one of the most important influences on him. He moved around a lot when he was young, due to his parents divorce, but remained a good student and graduated high school. After this he traveled the world and worked in different places, all the things he saw in his travels influenced him. In 1924 he settled down in Harlem where he became one of the important figures in the Harlem Renaissance. He enjoyed listening to blues and jazz in clubs while he wrote his poetry. The music that he enjoyed greatly influenced the style and rhythm of his poetry. The poem “Dream Variations” by Hughes is about an average African-American who dreams of a world where African-Americans are not looked at or treated differently and they can rest peacefully. Yet in real life this was not so, black people and white people were not equal. And the world was not as forgiving and nice as in their dream. This poem is a good example of Hughes writing because it is typical of three things. The first is the common theme of the average life of an African-American and their struggles. Secondly, the style of his writing which is based on the rhythm of jazz and blues- he uses a lot of imagery and similes. Lastly, his influences which are his lonely childhood and growing up as an Afric...
This poem is much more vague in the way Hughes chooses to state his dream. The poem opens by stating: “To fling my arms wide In some place of the sun To whirl and to Then rest at cool evening Beneath a tall tree While night comes on gently, (Variations lines 1-9) Here Hughes is stating how he wishes he could be free without a care in the world.
This means that it does go bad once you go. back to what isn't wanted. Is it disgusting not wanting to see? He uses imagery on the second to last stanza'maybe it just sags like a heavy load.
“Poetry is the rhythmical creation of beauty in words.” –Edgar Allan Poe. Poetry is one of the world’s greatest wonders. It is a way to tell a story, raise awareness of a social or political issue, an expression of emotions, an outlet, and last but not least it is an art. Famous poet Langston Hughes uses his poetry as a musical art form to raise awareness of social injustices towards African-Americans during the time of the Harlem Renaissance. Although many poets share similarities with one another, Hughes creatively crafted his poetry in a way that was only unique to him during the 1920’s. He implemented different techniques and styles in his poetry that not only helped him excel during the 1920’s, but has also kept him relative in modern times. Famous poems of his such as a “Dream Deferred,” and “I, Too, Sing America” are still being studied and discussed today. Due to the cultural and historical events occurring during the 1920’s Langston Hughes was able to implement unique writing characteristics such as such as irregular use of form, cultural and historical referenced themes and musical influences such as Jazz and the blues that is demonstrative of his writing style. Langston Hughes use of distinct characteristics such as irregular use of form, cultural and historical referenced themes and musical influences such as Jazz and the blues helped highlight the plights of African-Americans during the Harlem Renaissance Era.
Walter Younger is a dreamer. He dreams of owning his own business. When that dream falls apart, Walter's dream can be compared to Langston Hughes's poem "A Dream Deferred." according to arthur, “Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun?” Langston Hughes. This quote refers to Walter dream. Like the Raisin in the Sun his dream did dry up. This shows that not all dreams come true. Walter loses all of his mama insurance money and Walter is left with a dried up dream. His deferred dream is like a sore that festers and runs from the infection. Walter's dream can be compared to a sore that festers and runs. He explode from the disappointment of his broken dreams. He drinks heavily and comes home to get verbally
Langston Hughes (1902-1967) absorbed America. In doing so, he wrote about many issues critical to his time period, including The Renaissance, The Depression, World War II, the civil rights movement, the Black Power movement, Jazz, Blues, and Spirituality. Just as Hughes absorbed America, America absorbed the black poet in just about the only way its mindset allowed it to: by absorbing a black writer with all of the patronizing self-consciousness that that entails.
“I dream a world where… love will bless the earth and peace its paths adorn.” -- Langston Hughes
As people go through life they are hopeful for their dreams to come true, but a person can change based on a dream that is deferred. When a person’s dream is deferred they start to act differently. They make choices that not only affect themselves, but people they care about. Throughout a Raisin in the Sun, Lorraine Hansberry illuminates the truth of Hughes’s poem. Langston Hughes poem reveals the determinacy of a dream deferred. Dreams that people have can be related back to the Maslow hierarchy, and they also reveal how possible dreams are for everyone in society. In the play a Raisin in the Sun, Hansberry demonstrates that people can respond differently to a dream deferred through her symbolism and characterization.
Langston Hughes was one of the first black men to express the spirit of blues and jazz
James Langston Hughes was born February 1, 1902, in Joplin , Missouri . His parents divorced when he was a small child, and his father moved to Mexico . He was raised by his grandmother until he was thirteen, when he moved to Lincoln , Illinois , to live with his mother and her husband, before the family eventually settled in Cleveland , Ohio . It was in Lincoln , Illinois , that Hughes began writing poetry. Following graduation, he spent a year in Mexico and a year at Columbia University . During these years, he held odd jobs as an assistant cook, launderer, and a busboy, and travelled to Africa and Europe working as a seaman. In November 1924, he moved to Washington , D.C. Hughes's first book of poetry, The Weary Blues, was published by Alfred A. Knopf in 1926. He finished his college education at Lincoln University in Pennsylvania three years later. In 1930 his first novel, Not Without Laughter, won the Harmon gold medal for literature.
“What happens to a dream deferred?” Langston Hughes asks in his 1959 poem “Dream Deferred.” He suggests that it might “dry up like a raisin in the sun” or “stink like rotten meat” but, at the end of the poem, Hughes offers another alternative by asking, “Or does it explode?” This is the poem that the play A Raisin in the Sun by Lorraine Hansberry is based on. The play is about an African-American’s family struggling to break out of poverty.
Langston Hughes’s poem, Harlem, inspired the title of A Raisin in The Sun for it’s close relation with the theme of dreams. His poem can also connect back with Disney’s quote; Disney states that anyone’s dream can come true if pursued, while Hughes talks about what happens when dreams aren’t pursued. He discusses many different things that can happen when dreams are deferred. Many times when they aren’t chased, dreams have a negative impact on that person. Harlem is definitely a negative poem, conveyed through phrases like rotten, crust, sag, and fester - all unpleasant words. The poem’s pace and placement of each guess as to what happens of a dream deferred is important to the message of the poem. In the beginning, Hughes talks about processes that are slower, like “...dry[ing] up like a raisin in the sun” (2-3) and “crust[ing] and syrup[ing] over -- like a sugary sweet”(7-8). At the end of the poem, the author talks wonders “...does it just explode?” (11), something that happens much quicker than all his other guesses. I think the reason for his choice of pace is because that’s often the path that a dream deferred takes; a slow process, the dream slowly fades away until, BOOM, there isn’t a dream left i...
the poem “Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun?” Is an illusion that explains how a dream and the life of