HARLEM

Langston Hughes and Harlem Renaissance

(EXTENSIVE READING: In 'Harlem,' Hughes is saying that dreams are a necessary part of survival. He starts by asking a question: 'What happens to a dream deferred?' That is, when you put off (or defer) a dream, what happens to it? Most people might say that a 'dream deferred' will just fade away, but Hughes disagrees. He compares dreams to food, a basic element of survival. He talks about what happens when dreams are put off: They are like raisins, dried and shrunken and not nearly as juicy as the ripe grapes they came from. They are like rancid meat. They crust over like syrup left out. And he also compares them to physical ailments: an infected sore and someone sagging under a heavy load. 

So basically, Hughes is saying that dreams are an important part of human survival, and when they are ignored or put off, they rot and infect everything around them. 

And then, the last line: 'or does it explode?' This idea swoops in at the end of the poem and jars the reader with its vivid violence. We can imagine the fallout of a dream deferred like the result of a bomb that's exploded, destroying everything around it. Though the poem's message is true of all people, regardless of race, it's hard not to read this poem in the context of the Harlem Renaissance. At the time when Hughes was writing, slavery had been over for 60 years, but blacks were still treated with horrible inequality in their day-to-day lives. The dream of equality had been deferred, and the deeper message of the poem is that leaving that dream deferred will have consequences not just for the dreamers but for those denying the dream. In this context, Hughes is saying that the explosion of the deferred dream of equality could hit the entire country, not just the African American community.)

Langston Hughes (February 1, 1902 - May 22, 1967) born in Joplin, Missouri was an American novelist, playwright, short story writer, and columnist. He was one of the earliest innovators of the new literary art form jazz poetry. Hughes is best known for his work during the Harlem Renaissance.

The Harlem Renaissance was the name given to the cultural, social, and artistic explosion that took place in Harlem between the end of World War I and the middle of the 1930s. During this period Harlem was a cultural center, drawing black writers, artists, musicians, photographers, poets, and scholars. Langston Hughes was one of the most important writers and thinkers of the Harlem Renaissance. Hughes's creative genius was influenced by his life in New York City's Harlem, a primarily African American neighborhood. His literary works helped shape American literature and politics. Hughes, like others active in the Harlem Renaissance, had a strong sense of racial pride. Through his poetry, novels, plays, essays, and children's books, he promoted equality, condemned racism and injustice, and celebrated African American culture, humor, and spirituality.

Harlem was written in 1951 during a time when many African Americans felt limited in their ability to accomplish 'The American Dream.' Although the Civil War was over and African Americans had gained the right to vote; schools were still segregated (separated/isolated) and many African Americans could only find basic jobs that didn't provide them with a future. Therefore, many African Americans had little hope that their futures could be different; many thought their dreams would always remain out of their grasp. This poem vividly reflects the post World War II mood of many African Americans. The Great Depression was over, the war was over, but for African Americans the dream, whatever particular form it took, was still being deferred.

The poem is built of questions, and questions make us think of uncertainty and the quest for knowledge. Harlem consists of eleven lines broken into four stanzas. The first and last stanzas contain one line, while the other two contain seven and two lines respectively. Some lines are short, others longer. The poem actually has two titles. Hughes first titled it Harlem, but later called it Dream Deferred. Some people even refer to it by its first line, what happens to a dream deferred? Harlem introduces themes that run throughout Langston Hughes's volume Montage of a Dream Deferred. This poem focuses on the conditions of a people whose dreams have been limited, put off, or lost in post-World War II Harlem. Hughes claimed that ninety percent of his work attempted "to explain and illuminate the Negro condition in America." As a result of this focus, Hughes was labelled "the poet laureate of Harlem."

As the poet laureate of the Harlem Renaissance, Langston Hughes was passionate about exploring the soul and condition of the black community in America. He wanted to capture the everyday experience and struggles of black people, and celebrated their spirit through his art. He was a lover of humanity, and often touches upon big human ideas (like dreams in his poems). His greatest influences were Walt Whitman, Carl Sandburg, Paul Laurence Dunbar, and Claude McKay. Like them, he fused the sound and rhythms of colloquial speech with that of blues, jazz, and church music.

Langston Hughes uses a literary element, the simile, to help paint a mental picture of what it looks like to put off dreams. He opens the poem by asking readers what happens when dreams are deferred or put off. The remainder of the poem helps readers consider the many ways deferred dreams might impact their lives.

For example, in the second line of the poem, Hughes questions whether dreams dry up when they are deferred. He uses raisins (कीशमीश), dried fruit, to depict how our dreams (once ripe and filled with hope) dry up like raisins when we are not able to accomplish it. By asking, "what happens to a dream deferred?" the poem sketches a series of images of decay and waste, representing the dream (or the dreamer's) fate. While many of the potential consequences affect only the individual dreamer, the ending of the poem suggests that, when despair is epidemic, it may "explode" and cause board social and political damage.