Harlem: A Dream Deferred, By Langston Hughes

Jacalyn Ross
Mrs. Fischell
Language Arts 11
8 March 2023
Every Real American’s Dream is Different
A glistening grape, freshly grown, lay in the dry, coarse dirt. With the sun beaming down, on a humid day, it only takes an instant, the perfectly smooth skin begins to wrinkle, the moist flesh of the grape starts to shrink. The grape transforms into a raisin, still gratifying, but it has evolved, with a new flavor and texture. Similar to a dream, something has changed it, but there's a new perspective, the change is not all that bad. Everyone’s dreams look different over time and they often ameliorate in due course. In the poem, "Harlem; A Dream Deferred", by Langston Hughes, Hughes expressed how dreams sometimes do not work out. This is also

Langston Hughes, the poet, used the lines “Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun?”(1-2). This simile is comparing a dream to a raisin because the dream, being a grape, may have been too ambitious and was impossible to come true. So it dried up like a raisin, to create a new dream that was different, yet intriguing. The title “A Dream Deferred” proves that the poem solely focused on deferred, or postponed, dreams. Dreams that are put off to accomplish other dreams, whether they are more achievable or just better designed for the time being. This was important because in the time period of the writing, many families had a made up idea of the ‘American dream’ in their heads. In reality the American dream was individual to each person and their needs in life. So the poem proves that many dreams may feel like they aren’t achievable, so they are postponed, but what the reader can learn from the poem is that the dreams may turn into something new, like a raisin that came from a

In Act III, Asagai said, “...isn’t there something wrong in a house–in a world– where all dreams, good or bad, must depend on the death of a man?”(Hansberry 135). This specific quote is important because Asagai understood that Beneatha was upset about the loss of her family’s money, on the contrary he was not understanding why their family’s dreams relied on money to achieve them. In this time period the ‘American Dream’ consists of having a breadwinner father and a stay at home mother, in a nice clean home, with money on the side to spare, but Asagai was stating that it should not matter what amount of money they got from their fathers death, or if they got money at all, but their dreams should not depend on it. Additionally in Act III, Walter states, “And we have decided to move into our house because my father–my father– he earned it for us brick by brick.”(Hansberry 148) This quote easily presents that by the end of the play the family has learned to appreciate what they have and they have realized that the ‘American Dream’ is stereotypical and unrealistic. The true importance lies in their family history and their new and improved dream of living a happy life in their new