Ji Youn Park
English 123- Instructor Kingsley
Unit #2- Draft-1
Langston Hughes and His Uncompleted Dreams
Part 1. Theme Selection (500)
Langston Hughes’ poetry is full of references to “Dreams.” In fact, his 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 mother was a seeker, looking for a better
job and a living place, and eventually attained what she desired and offered little Langston
Hughes better educational opportunities. (3) From all his family’s longing, Langston Hughes
learned what cost of dreaming, why it is so important and what it would bring to him since he
was a small boy. 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 from in his early life. Although African-American were declared “free” by The
Emancipation Proclamation in 1863, their social status lingered 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. He believed that Dreams would come true so long as people did not give up as his
parents succeeded in achieving their goals. Most specifically, the poems “Dreams” (CP 32) and
“Harlem: A Dream Deferred” (CP 426) directly depict African American Dreams. “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.
In Hughes’ poem, “Dreams,” the importance of holding Dreams is represented as a
metaphor for life that cannot exist without dreams. He poem starts,
Holding fast to dreams
For if dreams die
Life is a broken-winged bird (CP 32)
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The urgent voice appeals to people not to give up on what they are dreaming about. He cries for
that when the dreams dies, life is dead as well. The first stanza, “Hold fast to dreams,” shows
Hughes’ desperation that actually inspires people (and motivating himself) not to give up on
aspirations but “Hold fast” to live. 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.”
Unlike in Hughes’ late poem, “Dreams,” “Harlem: A Dream Deferred” (CP 426) Hughes
expresses his disappointment since after holding dreams for so long years and he is asking
American Society why Blacks Dreams continue to be just Black Dreams that hardly come true.
His frustration is present here in the poem:
What happens to a dream deferred?
Does it dry up
[….]
Does it stink like rotten meat? (CP 426)
Hughes inquires himself or African Americans, rather than the White, about the state of their
dreams. His self-answering to these questions symbolize the struggle of the schism in African
American society.
Or fester like a store[….]
Or crust and sugar over[….]
Or does it explode?
Through two poems, Hughes not just enlighten his people, African Americans, but he also
require to take responsibility for a fail of fulfillment of dreams and reconstruct African American
society as an unity.
Part 2. The Thematic or Literature Review. Approx. 1000-1200 Words (3-5 Scholarly
Sources)
A number of literary scholars have examined the portrait of Dreams in the work of
Langston Hughes. A number of these discussions point to the conflict between the dream of
African American centered and ideals. The society that Langston Hughes dreamed about was
where he and his people could build their own culture originated in Africa and affirm with equal
assurance their identities: “I am a Negro” and also “I am an America.”
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
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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) David R. Jarrawya, in Montage of an Otherness
Deferred: Dreaming Subjectivity in Langston Hughes, takes an example of what Langston
Hughes dreamt about entire his life: “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, 821) Additionally, Jarraway exemplified one incident with Alfred A. Knopf,
Langston Hughes’ Publisher in the United States, as Hughes’ African American project that
“Knopf could not conceal his disdain for Hughes’ refusal to conform to the aesthetic dictates of
more mainstream (WASP, masculinist, middle-class) canonical figures.” (820) Langston
Hughes’ dream work has a great value in the image of the dreams and beloved widely. His
passion of the dreams and the hopes became one of the greatest embodiments of African
American literacy. Harold Bloom, in “The American Dream,” 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) Bloom describes Langston
Hughes literary work as “revolutionary inclinations” and takes “Harlem: Dream Deferred” for
example to expresses the frustrations and the rebellious query of protest against the substantiality
of the American Revolution. The prophetic query, “Or does it explode?,” at the last stanza
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, 42 -43)
Since Langston Hughes had become an African American poet, he endlessly wrote
“Dreams-poems.” Douglas Taylor, in “dream Politics in the Poetry of Langston Hughes,” 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) 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 refers are clearly social and utopian.” Taylor denies Hughes’ creativeness on his work
and argues that Hughes borrow the idea of dream or of social vision from “Freud’s insights into
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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) Taylor describes
“Dream” as the subversive power that Langston Hughes and his contemporaries provoke the
spiritual malaise and thereby have feelings of disenchantment of capitalism, imperialism that
Euro-American grappled with. (Taylor, 9) He suggests having a view of individuals as the minor
rebellions who need to heal the wounds and order and production.
Many scholars worked on Langston Hughes and his dreams in many different ways.
Harold Bloom approaches to Hughes literary works as a new form of American Revolution that
challenged to the White Americans’ “written down” historical assumptions and cultural norms.
David R. Jarraway demonstrates Hughes as “refusal” and “dreamer” of creating “the Negro
World.” While many scholars support Hughes’ 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. Among others, Douglas Taylor’s criticism
against Hughes’ “wishes to utopian visions” has a very interesting point of view. He grafts Freud
psychological theory onto Hughes “Dream Poems” and analyses why his dreams are only just
“utopian vision and utopian possibilities.” However, Taylor did not expend why Langston
Hughes obsesses about dreams and what dreams meant to him. Despite denunciation of Langston
Hughes’ poetry works from literary scholarship, no one cannot deny Hughes’ great efforts and
his aspiration for African American Dreams that sustained tons of African Americans hang on to
the White Oppression and Suppression. Harlem had a lot of meant to Hughes because it was the
first place where African American exposed their capacity and artistic talents in literary work,
Jazz and Blues (which originated from Africa) flourished while most Blacks lived in neverending poverty and while their social status in America was continuing to be the lowest in
America Society. Hughes’ dreams are not limited within Africa-Americans and it has become a
real American Dream for who live in the United States in present time.
Works Cited
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1. Rampersad, Arnold. “The Collected Poems of Langston Hughes.” Vintage Classes (1994):
3-7, 32, 426
2. Bloom, Harold. “Bloom’s Literary Themes: The American Dream: Children’s Rhymes
(Langston Hughes): The American Dream and the Legacy of Revolution in the Poetry of
Langston Hughes by Lloyd W. Brown, in Studies in Black Literature (1976).” Infobase
Publishing (2009): 37-46
3. Hughes, Langston. “The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain (1926).” Link:
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/learning/essay/2378581-5
4. Jarraway, David R. “Montage of an Otherness Deferred: Dreaming Subjectivity in
Langston Hughes.” Duke University Press (1996): 819-840
5. Taylor, Douglas. “Dream Politics in the Poetry of Langston Hughes”: 8-15
Part 3. Literary Resource Page
 GradeSaver: “I, Too” summary and analysis.”
: http://www.gradesaver.com/langston-hughes-poems/study-guide/summary-i-too
This website introduce, summarize, and analyze Langston Hughes’ poems.

“A reading Guide to Langston Hughes”
http://www.poets.org/poetsorg/text/reading-guide-langston-hughes
This website briefly explains Langston Hughes “Dream Poems” and then presents
Hughes’ thoughts about African American social problems. It summarize and
analyze Hughes’ several Dream Poems

Dreams & A dream deferred
https://vulpeslibris.wordpress.com/2010/05/24/dreams-by-langston-hughes/
This web also summarizes and analyzes one of Langston Hughes’ poems “Dreams”
and linked his “Dream Poems” with social phenomenon back that time.
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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
Wei, Xu. “Use of Dreams in Hughes’s Poetry.” Xu’s scholar study expresses the value of
Langston Hughes work, especially his attempt to attain African American Freedom from
all oppression of the White.

Westover, Jeff. “Africa/America: Fragmentation and Diaspora in the Work of
Langston Hughes”

Brinkman, Bartholomew. “Movies, Modernity, and All that Jazz: Langston Hughes’s
Montage of a Dream Deferred” Brinkman expresses how African Americans were
ignored by America society: even white actors played African American role. He
exemplifies subtle racial, cultural discrimination and how Hughes resisted the White
suppression.
Brainstorms.

“Dreaming” is one of the most substantial themes that Langston Hughes constantly
depicts in his poems.

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.

Life in Lawrence was miserable like he describes in his poems: “Aunty Sue’s Story” and
“Mother to Son.”

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
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challenge and the most difficult thing to overcome. In reality, “Dreams” rarely come true
in the real world for Black America.

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 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.

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.

The ideal world that Langston Hughes dreams about, the new world in where the black
can affirm as the black, in where African-American can proud their own culture without
mimicking the other superior races is still progressive.

His people can play 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.
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