The thematic subject of the poem dwells around realizing and achieving dreams

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Literature & Language
11 03 2021
LANGSTON HUGHES'S "HARLEM"
Harlem, written in 1951 by Langston Hughes, was intended to be part of the "Montage of a Dream Deferred" book-length sequence. Motivated by jazz and blues music, Langston proposed Montage to be read as a solitary poem while highlighting consciousness and Harlem's black community's lives. Hughes's Harlem ruminates the damage resulting from the dream of equity and racial parity when consistently delayed. In the poem, Hughes uses metaphor, imagery, and rhetorical questions to depict the theme of African Americans' deferred dream to set themselves free from the white oppressors.
The poem's title recalls racial inequalities and injustices that Harlem residents had persevered for a long time. When Langston wrote the poem in 1951, it was a period after the black people had fought World War II for the U.S military. However, they still confronted state-authorized segregation, pervasive unemployment, racism, police brutality, and white supremacist violence back home. The inequalities predicated the 1935 and 1943 Harlem Riots and Civil Rights Movements, which began to gain popularity in the early 1950s. Therefore, the title, "Harlem"(Hughes), launches the geographical, cultural, and political context of the poem's queries and concerns.
The poem consists of eleven lines with no traditional rhyme pattern assuming the "abcdbefeghh" scheme. Hughes begins the poem with "what happens to a dream deferred?"(Hughes, line 1) question. While the rest of the poem is indented, the first line is a free verse and flush-left aligned. The poet intentionally adopts the structure and formatting to connect the first line, which contains the poem's central theme, to the title. Read within the title's context; the dream refers to a collective vision and not just an individual drive. It is an idea of equity, racial equality, and social justice that Harlem people had yearned for a long time.
The speaker asks what happens to an idea or expectation of a society when continually postponed, "does it dry up?"(Hughes, line 2). Here, the narrator ponders whether the concept will diminish, weaken, and eventually dry up and die out just like a grapefruit left in the sun till it is juiceless. Or rather, would the expectation swell and burst out its contents, just like an unattended, severely infected wound that ultimately oozes puss. If the idea does not timely get fulfilled, the speaker enquires whether the society will still want to associate with it or get disgusted by the concept, just like the vile smell of putrefied meat. The poet thinks that maybe the dream will go mild, cool off, and eventually be discarded like a once tasty candy that finally gets moldy if not eaten in time. Hughes fronts another possibility of a deferred dream that might forever haunt and weigh down on the dreamers if they do not achieve it. However, there is a shift and change of tone in the poem's last line; the poet warns the oppressors of the consequences of a delayed dream; just like a time bomb, it might one day explode.
Langston uses numerous literary devices to depict the deeper meaning in the poem. The speaker addresses the various frustrations faced by Black Americans in a coun...