"Dream Deferred" by Langston Hughes

Langston Hughes is the synonymous leader of the early 1900s Harlem Renaissance.

 

His work pushed the "Black Experience" beyond the segregation and discrimination, from the back of the bus to front of the anthologies, and his poems are read and enjoyed in classrooms throughout the country to this day. Hughes' work deserves this honor. So pervasive has been the influence of his work, that one line, "raisin in the sun" became the title of a well-known play, documenting distinct perspectives on the Black experience.

 

"What happens to a dream deferred?"

 

"Defer" at its core signals difference and delay, and dreams inevitably contain the germ of tardiness, or otherwise they would not be dreams, but present and apparent realities.

 

"What happens to a dream deferred?"

 

"What happens" suggests that dreams just sit around and wait. Dreams do not exist in and of themselves, but are the product and profession of another, in the febrile mind of a fun man, or the feverish demand of a weak personality.

 

"What happens to a dream deferred?"

 

Dream deferred, the alliteration of noun and verb announces the start and finish of this poem, the central goal of all that is taking place in this poem.

 

"Defer" — What does it mean '" to defer"? It can mean to put something off until a later time. This delay can be for the better or for the worse. Does a dream get better just because a man has no plan to advance the dream in his mind? More specifically, "to defer" can also mean to put someone off from military service, like a reprieve. Dreamers may dream, but in many cases they must fight to make their dreams come true. "Defer" can also imply submission, or respect, like an inferior officer stepping aside to a man with greater reason and rank. Some dreams are in the infancy stage, requiring more time, more thought, more preference until a better time arrives.

 

Yet what does the poet say? What does happen to a dream deferred?

 

Does it dry up
like a raisin in the sun?

 

A raisin in the sun, rays in the sun, the suns rays make the grape more sweet, more tough. Raisins last a long time. Raisins do not go bad. Raisins can survive the long haul in a lunch sack.

 

In the Bible, raisins are a sensuous source of strength:

 

"Stay me with flagons [lit. raisin cakes], comfort me with apples: for I am sick of love." (Song of Solomon 2: 5)

 

In First Samuel Chapter 30, David the Beloved gave raisins to the starving and deprive Egyptian, who then led the anointed king to victory over the Philistines.

 

Raisins speak of love, victory, sustenance, restoration, the culmination of great joy, just as time must pass for the grape to dry up into a more delicious fruit.

 

Or fester like a sore–
And then run?

 

A sore that festers — what a ghastly sight! A site of infection, of stench. A wound that grows decay and disease, this grim image imparts to the reader the lingering pain of a dream that waits to be realized, that waits to take place, that waits and waits, and then it runs. Yet in so sickening a sight, the notion of a "running sore" indirectly implies life and opportunity. A sore that runs is a mess that heals, and in the same vein, a dream deferred will not remain ignored,  but will break forth in the life of a man.

 

Does it stink like rotten meat?

 

Rotten meat, stinking like the sore, sits on a table, on a plate, or perhaps in the trash, waiting to be removed forever from the one who refused to eat. Yet meat that rots, meat the stinks, this is meat in which new life also lives, for what makes this stench so strong is the new creation of bacteria air-borne landing on a piece of flesh. Just as the macabre poet of the Boulevard, Charles Baudelaire, found a soul in the rotting carcase, just as he sang songs of praise to Don Juan in Hell, or commiserated with the great princes of the air, Albatrosses, who dragged to the earth still convey a sorrowful royalty, the deepest ugliness can remind the appalled viewer that life will not remain uncovered forever.

 

Does the poet see this life? Does he see the seething meat as anything more than an eyesore?

 

Or crust and sugar over–
like a syrupy sweet?

 

Now the poet rhymes, how meet that meat does rhyme with sweet. So much time is spent on "ee" — is the dream, then, something to eat? Or does the dream still eat at the dreamer? "Crust'", a covering, protects the dream. Even if the plan does not come to pass, the time passing passes over and protects the dream for future passage. "Sugar over" the crust is and does, a symbol both active and passive, that the "dream deferred" is not lost nor forlorn. The dream gets bigger, gets smaller, but will not be static and stay still.

 

Maybe it just sags
like a heavy load.

 

Sags — a dream that sags? Still, it will not be still. The dream will not stay, like the smell, good or bad, noisome or noisy, that flies invisible from the sore, the meat, or the raisins so sweet. A heavy load intones the poet, oh oh oh, a burden that goes nowhere. Yet the baggy dream is saggy dream, and a sad does more than "just" nothing — only this bad "justly" sags. The "dream deferred" will not defer forever.

 

Or does it explode?

 

Dreams that explode, come to pass, or pass through mind and heart to a mindless, heartless world, pressing past the staunch, stench, stink, sticking to the walls. The raisin does not explode, except in the mouth of a dry and weary traveler, renews his strength, gives him ease for the journey. The dream is now alive, refused to be put away. Not rotten, not running, not run down, but ready to be read.

 

The poem — "Dream Deferred" — has waited long enough, and for the reader, the surprised catches him, comprised no more with guesses. The dreams he had, or has, or they still deferred? From running sores to rotten meat, from sugary sweets, what does he see? The "dream" cannot never be "deferred" but grow, alive for better or for worse.

 

"Dream Deferred" draws out the dreams deferred in a reader. When the poet poses the question, the reader goes from wondering to pondering. The poem says a lot, like the rotting meat, teeming with life while seeming lifeless, like the dream that waits to be inferred, not just implied.

 

The poem is so sweet, so juicy, unlike the dry raisin, yet just as tasty. The little poem backs a big, bomb punch, "explodes" in the mind, where  dreams deferred are referred and preferred at a later date — or raisin!