Ji Youn Park
English 123- Instructor Kingsley
Unit #2- Draft-1
Langston Hughes and His Uncompleted Dreams
Part 1. Theme Selection (500)
“Dreaming” is one of the most substantial themes that Langston Hughes
constantly depicts in his poems. In “Dreams,” Hughes presents Dreams as a metaphor for life;
“For if dreams die / Life is a broken-winged bird” that will eventually die. He shows his
desperation as “Hold fast to dreams,” inspiring people (and motivating himself) not to give up on
aspirations but “Hold fast to dreams” to live. For oppressed African American, there was almost
no opportunity to succeed at anything because they were not given freedom. No one can succeed
without freedom or opportunity. Holding onto dreams represented hope, believing in better days,
and the possibility of a brighter future. Hughes says that if they lost dreams, their life is a
“broken-winged bird,” and “a barren field.” No matter what reality attempts to destroy you, do
not let your dream, your life, die under “Frozen with snow.”
Langston Hughes’ poetry carries his heritage and passion for dreaming about his African
Ancestors. His grandmother’s first husband, Lewis Sheridan Leary, participated John Brown’s
raid on Harpers Ferry in 1859 and died from his wounds. (Rampersad, 3) His father, James N.
Hughes, escaped the enduring racism in America and became a landowner in Mexico. (3) His
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mother was a seeker who attained and offered little Langston Hughes better opportunities. (3)
Since he was a small boy, Langston Hughes learned the cost of dreaming. Unlike the white
families in the South, his family was separated for having something better than most Blacks,
something ambiguous to Whites and Blacks. In some ways, Langston lived in a netherworld.
While his parents were seeking for their vision of the future, he was living with his grandmother
in Lawrence, Kansas, where he experienced race injustice and prejudice early in his life. Life in
Lawrence was miserable like he describes in his poems: “Aunty Sue’s Story” and “Mother to
Son.” Although African-Americans were declared “free” by The Emancipation Proclamation in
1863, they would remain suffering under White Oppression, lack of sufficient food, unequal
educational and socio-economical opportunities. Above all, enduring the brutality of racially
charged violence inflicted by the White KKK was the most fearful and life threatening for
African Americans in the South. By recording daily happenings occurring around him in his
poems, the hopes and the dreams grew in young Hughes’ mind silently. Langston Hughes’
poetry is full of references to “Dreams.” Most specifically, the poems “Dreams” and “Harlem: A
Dream Deferred” directly depict this theme. “Dreams” emphasizes the importance of keeping
“Dreams” by using metaphorical expression “Dreams” as “Life.” Likewise “Dream Deferred”
demonstrates his feeling of frustration about “Dreams” still remaining unfulfilled. “Dreams” that
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are far away from reality. While “Dreams” contains a strong positive prediction of the future,
“Dream Deferred” explodes into despair.
Part 2. The Thematic or Literature Review. Approx. 1000-1200 Words (3-5 Scholarly
Sources)
In Montage of an Otherness Deferred: Dreaming Subjectivity in Langston Hughes, David
R. Jarraway clarifies what Langston Hughes dreamt about entire his life that was “To create a
Negro culture in America – a real, solid, sane, racial something growing out of the folk life, not
copied from another, even though surrounding race.” (Jarraway, 3) Likewise Langston Hughes
recalls one dialogue with “one of the most promising of the young Negro poets” who wants to be
a poet not like a Negro poet, but like a white poet,” in his essay The Negro Artist and the Racial
Mountain (1926). (Hughes, 1) Thereafter, Hughes laments that this social phenomenon was
happening within the new African American middle-class. He believed that African Americans
would never be able to succeed without first accepting their blackness, being acculturated into
the White American standardization, and “to be as little Negro and as Much American as
possible.” (1) Langston Hughes’ poem “Dreams” is a plea to African Americans to not surrender
to White Power, to sustain African American heritage, and resist social injustice; “Hold fast to
Dreams.” Hughes himself knew that it was not simple for African Americans to resist
assimilating into mainstream White American Culture. This could be the hardest challenge and
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the most difficult thing to overcome. In reality, “Dreams” rarely come true in the real world for
Black America.
If “Dreams” is to inspire African Americans to endure the harsh living conditions, and
discover how to survive as a Negro, in “Harlem: Dream Deferred” Hughes expresses his
disappointment, asking American Society why Blacks Dreams continue to be just Black Dreams.
Since he had become an African American poet, he endlessly wrote hopeful poems about
“Dreams.” Douglas Taylor even made a cynical remark in reaction to Hughes’ “Dream” work by
using a psychic explanation “Obsession.” According to Taylor, seventy-four Langston Hughes’
poems make explicit reference to dreams out of the 879 poems in The Collected Poems of
Langston Hughes (Taylor, 8) Despite Hughes’ great efforts and desires, African American
Dreams had become stagnated by White Oppression and Suppression. In Harlem, African
American Arts, Jazz and Blues (which originated from Africa) flourished while most Blacks
lived in never-ending poverty. The social status of African-Americans continues to be the lowest
in America Society. In “Dream Deferred,” Langston Hughes explores his “frustration of the
disinherited Black American, the reflections which that disinheritance casts on the substantiality
of the American Revolution.” (Bloom, 42) He uses the rebellious query of protests, “What
Happens to a dream deferred?” (42) He wonders where it disappeared “Does it dry up / Does it
stink like rotten meat?” In the fourth stanza, “Or fester like a sore-“ might indicates the Negro
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middle-class who attempt to become a member of the White society by inserting their true
origin; “Don’t be like niggers,” and “Look how well a white man does things.” In seventh stanza,
“Or crust and sugar over – / like a syrupy sweet?” is interpretive the time of the dessert. No
matter how much you desire, you have to wait for the right time. It is still the time for struggling
and the time for freedom has not come yet. Hughes might comforts himself with this phrase and
trusts in African American Dream once more. The last stanza, “Or does it explode?” echoes that
“legacy of revolution which, ironically, has fallen to Black Americans, precisely because the
rhetoric and dreams of that other revolution have failed them.” (Bloom, 43)
Langston Hughes’ dream work has a great value in the image of the dream and beloved
widely. His passion of the dreams and his poems became embodiment of African American
literacy that written down for white folks. Harold Bloom evaluates Hughes’ poems as “the very
essence of his own poetic protest to obviously identify with the Black rebel-heirs to the
American Dream.” (43) He supports Hughes’ idea of dreams by introducing Loyd W. Brown’s
words that “if Blacks have been excluded outright from the American Dream, White Americans
have also denied themselves the substance of those libertarian ideals that have been enshrined in
the sacred rhetoric, and history, of the American Revolution.” (37) On the other hand, Taylor
appeals critical reviews about Hughes’ dreams; “The word “dream” does not refer to dreams in
the literal sense, but rather in the metaphorical sense of hope and aspirations,” and “Hughes
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refers are clearly social and utopian.” Taylor denies that Hughes’ creativeness on his work and
argues that Hughes borrow the idea of dream or of social vision from “Freud’s insights into
dreams while simultaneously revising them to suit the hopes and aspirations of the African
American community on whose behalf he wrote.” He further more expends his criticism against
Hughes’ antisocial attitude with using Freud’s describes in Civilization and its Discontents that
“Utopian Possibilities” are too far cynical to embrace so that rather than being resisted,
ultimately accepts as necessary to the functioning of any civilized society” (9)
Langston Hughes dream about the new world in where the black can be black, in where
his people can paly part of their role as the black rather than let the White play their part in
movies. His dreaming world is where Afro-Americans love themselves without denying their
color and without mimicking the other superior races. While many people love his vision of the
dreams and embrace his inspirations, some scholars express skeptical reviews about his poems
that demonstrate primarily based on racism, aspiration, and individual desire. Although these two
groups have different perspectives on Langston Hughes’ “Dream Poems,” it is difficult to deny
how his work inspire people, especially in the low-class in American society, to turnover the
harsh realities and embrace positive minds to fulfill their dreams come true. Unfortunately, his
dreaming world has not completed yet as “Liberty and Justice” have not fully effected on people
equalities.
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Part 3. Literary Resource Page
“I, Too” summary and analysis
: http://www.gradesaver.com/langston-hughes-poems/study-guide/summary-i-too
A reading Guide to Langston Hughes
http://www.poets.org/poetsorg/text/reading-guide-langston-hughes
Dreams & A dream deferred
https://vulpeslibris.wordpress.com/2010/05/24/dreams-by-langston-hughes/
http://www.poets.org/poetsorg/text/reading-guide-langston-hughes
http://www.123helpme.com/dreams-and-dream-deffered-by-langston-hughesview.asp?id=151947
http://hlla.hrw.com/hlla/writersmodel/pdf/W_E0907.pdf?WebLogicSession=Q2O6mfM0ede2wL
eCM3MweFbO1fic741oj2fI4b6uaQtLRDYAK7vm%7C4488323233369064591/1062731320/6/6001/6001/7002/7002/6001/-1
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