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- “Harlem” Summary.
- “Harlem” Themes. The Cost of Social Injustice. Where this theme appears in the poem: Lines 1-11. The Individual and the Community.
- Line-by-Line Explanation & Analysis of “Harlem” Line 1. What happens to a dream deferred? Lines 2-5. Does it dry ... ... And then run? Lines 6-8. Does it stink ...
- “Harlem” Symbols. The Dream. Where this symbol appears in the poem: Line 1: “dream”
Sep 25, 2019 · In “Harlem,” Langston Hughes asks one of American poetry’s most famous questions: what happens to a dream deferred? This question echoes throughout American culture, from Broadway to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s speeches.
- Background of The Poem
- Harlem Summary
- Themes in Harlem
- Harlem Analysis
Literary Context
Harlem Renaissance in literature, music, and art started in the 1910s and 1920s. The writers of the Harlem renaissance are mainly from the community in Harlem. They deal with the problems and everyday life experiences of black people in Harlem. Langston Hughes was one of the leading writers of the Harlem renaissance. The movement sought to explore the black experiences and put them in the center. They attempt to formulate a distinctly black aesthetic instead of following the norms and models...
Historical Context
The historical context of the poem “Harlem” is linked with its literary context. The historical context of the poem is very important to understand the poem. The history of Harlem is involved in the historical context. More than six million African Americans moved to cities in the Midwestern, northern, and western parts of the United States from the rural South during the Great Migration in the early twentieth century. There, the white supremacist violence and state-sectioned racism that incl...
What happens to a dream deferred? Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun? Or fester like a sore— And then run? Does it stink like rotten meat? Or crust and sugar over— like a syrupy sweet? The poem opens with the speaker asking questions from the reader/listeners, “What happens to a dream deferred?”Over here, the word “deferred” means postponed. T...
The Cost of Social Injustice
The poem “Harlem is written in 1951, almost ten years before the Civil Rights Act in 1964. Langston Hughes also wrote about the consequences of the Harlem riots in 1935 and 1943. Both of the riots were ignited by the pervasive unemployment, segregation, and the brutality of the police in the black community. In the poem, Langston Hughes deals with this time period of African American history. The very title of the poem “Harlem” places it in a historically immigrant and black neighborhood in t...
The Individual and the Community
The poem “Harlem” can be read and interpreted in two ways. First of all, the deferred dream can be taken as a collective dream of a community. The dream can also be taken as an individual dream. The poem proposes that in the black community, the individual and the collective dreams are connected with each other. Therefore, it is not possible to realize the individual dream without the realization of the collective dream of equality. The obvious can be taken as an account of the deferral of a...
Langston Hughes’s poem “Harlem” mirrors the post-World War II mood of millions of African Americans. When the poem was written, a period of the Great Depression was over; likewise, the great World War II was also over. However, the dream of African Americans was still deferred or postponed. Langston Hughes takes the dream very seriously, no matter ...
Jan 15, 2016 · Also commonly known as ‘Harlem,’ ‘Montage of a Dream Deferred’ is a book-length poem that speaks about the lives of Harlem residents who are not experiencing the “American Dream,” but instead are having their dreams deferred.
Langston Hughes first published his poem “Harlem” in 1951, as part of a book-length poetic sequence titled Montage of a Dream Deferred. As he outlines in his introduction to that book, Hughes sought to evoke “the riffs, runs, breaks, and distortions of the music of a community in transition.”
Feb 19, 2024 · The poem, “Harlem” is in the form of a series of questions, a certain inhabitant of Harlem asks (to himself or to someone listening to him) – “What happens to a dream deferred?” He tries to answer tentatively, but his questions are more telling than the attempt at an answer.
The speaker of the poem asks a series of questions. He asks first, what happens to a dream that is deferred – that is, a dream or ambition which is never realised? Does it try up like a raisin in the sun, shrivelling away and losing something of itself?
