In Langston Hughes’ poem, Harlem (A Dream Deferred), the author ponders about the effects of an insurmountable dream. The poem is mainly about the limitations of what was known as the “American Dream” for African Americans post World War II. Hughes’ poem is stated in the beginning of Lorraine Hansberry’s play, A Raisin in the Sun. This play focuses on an African American family, the Youngers, suffering with financial issues, trying to live a better life by moving into an all-white neighborhood. Each character in the play has his/her own dream and with economic misfortunes, comes a lingering dream. The significance of having a dream and the feeling of failure when unable to accomplish that dream is presented in both A Raisin in the Sun and Harlem …show more content…
This poem displayed the hardships of the African American community by using a series of questions that all have negative connotations. These questions are ultimately ways to answer an even bigger question, “What happens to a dream deferred?”. To answer this question, Hughes starts off by writing, “Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun?” He continues with, “Does it stink like rotten meat?” His final response is “Or does it explode?” This array of thoughts are pessimistic similes and metaphors to construe the fact that everyone can dream and will dream, even if the outcome is not what was hoped. These dreams were especially difficult to accomplish for African Americans during an American time period with racism being an extensive part of this …show more content…
Walter declares, “Nobody in this house is ever going to understand me.” Walter dreams of investing in the liquor store with his friends to earn money. He believes this is the way to support his family from living with such atrocious conditions. Ruth expresses her desire to relocate, while conversing with Mama and says, “Well, Lord knows, we’ve put enough rent into this here rat trap to pay for four houses by now.” Basically, Mama and Ruth disagree with Walter and prioritize moving to a new house in the all-white neighborhood, so they are at least living comfortably. On the other hand, Beneatha wants money to pursue in her education. In an assured manner, Beneatha announces, “Oh, I probably will… but first I’m going to be a doctor, and George, for one, still thinks that’s pretty funny. I couldn’t be bothered with that. I am going to be a doctor and everybody around here better understand that!” Beneatha’s dream is to become a doctor and she needs money to pay for the tuition. Hansberry clearly identifies each characters’ dream and their in just the first Act of the
Like the Youngers do in Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun, living in Chicago during the 1950s was tough for an African-American family. In this play, Hansberry presents a story which demonstrates the effects of putting off one's dreams. Throughout this drama, the Younger family tackles trial after tribulation while they struggle to realize their aspirations. In the concluding segment of the story, while many of the characters’ dreams do not come true, some simply do. The poem “Harlem,” by Langston Hughes, embodies this concept of dreams and aspirations. It is apparent that Hansberry used Hughes’ poem as a direct source of inspiration, seeing as she named her story after the line "What happens to a dream deferred, does it dry up like a raisin in the sun?" (Meyer 1730). A Raisin in the Sun is an appropriate title because it figuratively relates to the characters’ dreams.
Langston Hughes wrote a poem, in 1951, called “Harlem”. It sums up the play A Raisin in the Sun, by Lorraine Hansberry: “What happens to a dream deferred? Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun? Or fester like a sore- and the run? Does it stink like rotten meat? Or crust and sugar over- like a syrupy sweet? Maybe it just sags like a heavy load. Or does it explode?” Lorraine Hansberry uses this poem to open A Raisin in the Sun. This dialogue suggests what happens to the African American’s dream during the Brown v. Board of Education trials. While critiquing this play I was a little disappointed that Brown v. Board of Education was not discussed directly. However, I did find the plot of the play, and the people who were attending it to be very interesting.
Throughout Langston Hughes poems, “The Negro Speaks of Rivers,” and “I, Too,” he discuss issues of equality and racism. When Hughes wrote these poems, African Americans were not accepted by White Americans. Blacks were discriminated against and killed violently; they had to sit in the back of the buses, and were denied the right to vote, just to name a few issues. With this kind of separation so prevalent, both blacks and whites feared for their lives. The symbolism in this poem represents the relationships between rivers and the history of the African American life. The poem is also structured to provide the unity of the African American history. Hughes also uses imagery for the readers to understand the history and background of African Americans’.
In the poem Harlem by Langston Hughes, it’s repeatedly questioned what happens when a dream is deferred. After all, “Would it dry up like like a raisin in the sun?”(Hughes 2-3). It turns out that the author Lorraine Hansberry ended up taking that very line from the poem and the question that came along with it when she wrote the play A Raisin in the Sun. In addition, Harper Lee, author of To Kill a Mockingbird, took it one step further when she centered her novel around how our judicial system deferred the American Dream. In fact, this misconception about the American Dream is revered to Swedish sociologist Gunnar Myrdal which made move to the United States to study race, as shown in the film American Dilemma.
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.
Martin Luther King Jr. once said, “The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.” The playwright, A Raisin in the Sun, written by Lorraine Hansberry, is an excellent example of an African American family struggling to live through the severe discrimination of the 1950s. The Youngers, a family of five residing in a tiny apartment in the slums of South Side Chicago, wish to escape poverty and live as happily as the white families in America. Walter Lee Younger, an ambitious man who works as a chauffeur and believes money is happiness, becomes selfish and learns a valuable lesson through his attempt to own a liquor store in order to resolve his family’s financial struggles. By the end of the story, Walter’s persistence on bringing the Younger’s out of the ghetto and into an elegant area seems closer to a reality than it does to a dream.
In Lorraine Hansberry’s play “Raisin in the Sun”, the central theme shown is that is worth it to have dream, no matter the struggle to make it a reality. Throughout the play, the Younger family are struggling to make their dreams come true due to many factors such as lack of money and being an African American family during the 1950s. However, the family never loses their hope of making their dreams a reality. The pieces of evidence that supports the theme is the insurance money, Mama’s plant, and the relations with the American Dream.
A Raisin in the Sun by Lorraine Hansberry is a play which tells of a black family’s experiences as they move into a “white” neighborhood. They attempt to improve their lives by using the insurance money following their father’s death. The American dream in that time period was to have a house, a yard, a car, and a happy family. In “A Raisin in the Sun” by Lorraine Hansberry, the play illustrates the limitations of the American dream for the Younger family which is the limitation of money, the racism in that time period, as well as the deception by Willy Harris.
“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. The poverty stands in the way of them accomplishing their dreams and goals. Poverty has a strong effect on Walter Lee Younger a character in the play. Walter Lee believes that success is measured in wealth. In the play he constantly struggles to move up the social ladder and earn more money.
Setting high expectations for one another defies the actions amongst the family members. Becoming a doctor to heal the ones in need was a dream that Beneatha wants to fulfill. Therefore, she feels that she can accomplish her goals with the insurance money her mama receives. However, Walter believes that his sister should just marry into a rich family and become a nurse, which is evident when he states “Who told you to become a doctor? If you so crazy ‘bout messing ‘round with sick people- then go be a nurse like other woman- or just get married and be quiet”(Hansberry 386).
After the Civil War won the black people their freedom, it seemed as though their dreams of great opportunities were finally going to come true. However, they were met by even more obstacles, which left the blacks to wonder if their dreams had any chance of occurring, or if they should just give up. In his poem, “Harlem,” Langston Hughes used increasingly destructive imagery to present his warning of what will happen if you delay working towards your goal.
In ‘A Raisin in the Sun’, Lorraine Hansberry describes each of the family’s dreams and how they are deferred. In the beginning of the play Lorraine Hansberry chose Langston Hughes’s poem to try describe what the play is about and how, in life, dreams can sometimes be deferred.
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...
“What happens when dreams are deferred?” is the first line in Langston Hughes’s “Harlem,” a very interesting social commentary on Harlem in the early 1950’s. It talks about a “dream deferred” Harlem, which was a haven for literature and intellect in the late 20’s and early 30’s, but has become run down and faded to a shadow of its former existence. Langston Hughes’s “Harlem” is filled with extremely vivid imagery.
In the lyric poems, “Dreams” and “Harlem,” written by Langston Hughes, the speaker discusses the Harlem Renaissance, that Hughes thought would be successful, but backfired. A common theme for Hughes’s poems are the impediments of the American dream for African Americans. However, African Americans cannot dream or aspire to great things because of the environment of oppression that surrounds them. Although, these two poems are often grouped together, the inconspicuous contrasts in the tones, messages, and figurative languages conceal the relevance between both poems.