A "Dream Deferred" in "Harlem"
As a child growing up everyone seems to have the ideal life set in their mind. You know what you want to do with your life; you know everything there is to know. Or do you? Dreams start out simple and later grow complex. At a young age you look up to people in your life and want to be just like them and want to marry fabulous people with an ideal type set in your mind. You grow up and come to realize that things aren't as easy as you expected them to be. In 1951 Langston Hughes asks us "What happens to a dream deferred"? or to put a whole new spin on things what happens to a "Dream Deferred" when your in "Harlem"? Langston Hughes wrote one poem and it was titled two different titles throughout his life, each tit
Just as dreams start simple and later are complex so is the poem "Harlem" [Dream Deferred] with one title it seems so simplistic and just by the change of the title the reader can obtain a whole new meaning from the words. The last line, "OR does it explode?" has much more meaning with the title "Harlem" because later there was up-roar and riots, as if society were exploding. Through this writing you can see the important of all aspects of a poem. The title alone in this poem sets up your frame of mind for the rest of the poem. 's "I have A Dream" speech even though that was years to come. Just as dreams carry a whole new meaning, that is unless they are "deferred". Reading this poem with the title "Dream Deferred" makes it universal, anyone can relate to it. On the other hand if the poem is read with the title "Harlem" people automatically attach stereotypes to the name such as poverty and label it a black neighborhood where nothing good will come out of it. 6) As the reader encounters the strophe of questions they reflect back on their dreams and do a type of self analysis almost. The questions Hughes is asking the reader make them think about their dreams they had and what happened to them, "Does [the dream] stink like rotten meant?"(ln. Even the words tend to take on a whole new meaning. le gives the poem a profoundly different reading. The majority of the world can relate to having a dream deferred in their life, and this poem is away for them to relate. I associate the word dream with Martin Luther King Jr.
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