Harlem (1950) by Langston Hughes: Analysis & Commentary

harlem by langston hughes 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 maybe it just sags like a heavy load or does it explode

this last line here italics it's a key feature of the poem what does that say for how that line should be said how should it be read it's kind of

conspiratorial conspiratorial that's how it feels to me he's italics like langston hughes the poet speaker

knows that this is the key insight that this is the truth about this poem which

the subject is a dream deferred so poems beg us to ask questions what are the questions

that come from reading this poem what dreams whose dreams why deferred postponed

left for another day been told to wait dream this dream later and dream of what so license hughes a black american

associated with the harlem renaissance so he lived in harlem he knew harlem so we need to connect the place this poem is about a place and it's

about the dreams of the people who live in that place lived in that place he lived in the harlem in the late 1920s and early 30s

by the time 1950 rolled around langston hughes was regarded as one of the great american poets i think of langston hughes as a writer of uh great character

and dignity and personal dignity i think of langston hughes kind of the same way i think about duke ellington like a truly

great and unique american voice who was able to achieve succeed distinguish himself with his great dignity

despite the the racist society and culture which which enveloped his life in so many ways

so what happens to a dream deferred these are different possibilities the first time i read this poem i was in high school i was 16 years old

because this phrase here raisin in the sun was used by lorraine hansberry to write a play of that title raisin in the sun that probably is

would be a great way to to look inside this poem to look in between the lines to dig into uh this this possibility

of these dreams that have been deferred it's a really great play raisin in the sun does it dry up so

dream here is also uh it's a it's a metaphor it's being uh investigated from different angles different possible angles does it dry up

like a raisin in the sun or fester like a sore and then run this line is interesting because it really invites us to perceive it as couples but it's

destabilizing because here we have two i mean this is very clearly um this enjambment right here very clearly uh

invites us to perceive these lines as as a couplet does it dry up like a

raisin in the sun

or fester like a sore and then run conditional or then here we start again

but now there are three here's another or so what do we have from this first or sorry the second stanza we really have a lot of uncertainty

possibility and uncertainty a lot of conditional possibilities are invited and then we have the

destabilizing structural element of a couplet a couplet and then a triplet

but the triplet has two questions and then what seems like a tentative answer to the question and this is you know this does not have 14 lines

it's not a sonnet one two three four five six seven eight nine ten eleven um but it has some of the features of a sonnet and that a sonnet

frequently will ask a question ask a question or pose a problem and then a solution or a possible solution or those different possible solutions will be interrogated and that's somewhat what is happening in

this poem what happens to a dream deferred where we have a set of speculations that run the gambit uh you know does it dry up like a raisin in the sun

what does that mean well that means that the the that the dream just no longer exists it's no longer a dream it's been transformed into something else so the

so the the weight of the environment around the dream is such that the dream

uh collapses into nothingness really uh a raisin in the sun is uh but then there's also this idea that

raisin in the sun concentrates the essence of a grape um but it looks very different it's wrinkly kind of gross kind of dry

and personally a personal level i do not like raisins but it gets smaller it definitely gets smaller by drying up so does the dream get smaller by drying

up in the sun the sun standing in for um really what's racist society racist culture institutions that do not

see the humanity of the dreamer so what happens to the dream deferred really maybe it's about the dreamer

what happens to the dreamer of that dream because everybody dreams right festering like a sore means it gets worse it grows that's a that's an infection

that's spreading and then run so that's the interesting thing about this second implied couplet is that the relationship between the two um is not as clear as these two lines

these two lines it's quite clear or fester like a sort and then run is that the sore that's running or the dream that's running now we have a collision

of um of images and metaphors which is a little bit destabilizing which kind of leads to this feeling of possibility uncertainty

and i would say just like generally destabilized meaning stay equalized meaning does it stink like rotten meat so here we've returned

to something that's very a very concrete image that we can grab hold of very clearly does it stink but now we have the idea the metaphor the dream

deferred the dreamer is that they are um they're filling the air with the defeat i suppose of the

of the ultimate deference of the dream or crust and sugar over or again but crust and sugar over would be the dream what's happening to the dream here is

maybe it's appearing to be something better than it is or the reality of the dream deferred becomes an experience where you just try to look nice try to sound nice but

the dream is still deferred it's crushed and sugared over like a syrupy sweet so now these are again linked more closely

so there's interesting things going on structurally here with this one two three four five six seven lion stanza you know you can look for balance just

like a you know and if we were to try to balance things out then this one becomes the fulcrum which is like i don't know you know if you're trying to say as much as you can

about a poem it might be a way to think about things look at the line lengths this line is shorter and then run

it's clean because syrupy sweet and then we have a stanza break here so we're like turning the page

maybe it just sags like a heavy load you know sagging is not drying up sagging is not festering it's not stinking it's sagging you know so if you look at all

these verbs that's another thing to do does it dry up you know so does it dry

fester run stink crust

two crust to sugar sags which is these are i guess more active verbs

drying up isn't is an action festering running certainly an action stinking crusting sugaring over these are these are transformative actions these are changing into something else

but sagging is different sagging is just the weight like a heavy load which is so we have we also have several

if you wanted to just you know what are these things you got simile simile simile maybe it just sags like a heavy load and then

and i guess i'll just put the word here because it's a useful i don't know how frequently it's used outside of outside of sonnet analysis

the genre of sonnet analysis but the word is volta which i think is italian for turn but it certainly feels like a turn

right here because this is much much it's it's different you know and especially because it's italics he wants us to recognize that it's different and so this is the key insight and i as i started

i think that this is the fact that it's italicized invites us to realize that we are aligned with langston hughes and recognition that

this is what really happens or maybe this is what should really happen with those dreams deferred volta by the way is a great band called the mars volta ever heard the mars volta they're just

uh i had the good fortune many many years ago to sit down and have dinner with fleet from the red hot chili peppers and we we listened to delos and the comatorium

together what does that have to do with langston hughes harlem nothing it's just a great word and a great little story from a

fun part of my life before my current part of my life which is also pretty fun

there it is by request more langston hughes let me know