Like A Raisin In The Sun By Langston Hughes

A Dream Deferred in Harlem African Americans went to the north in hopes of bettering their lives. They thought that by going north they would escape the hate groups, and hate crimes. But, unfortunately, that did not occur. When they arrived, they were not welcomed with opened arms. The prejudice and discrimination against them still occurred even though slavery had ended years ago. Harlem became a neighborhood full of the African American community. Soon Harlem had a growing artistic, cultural, and social explosion of African American culture, this time period is now known as the Harlem Renaissance. Langston Hughes is one of the best know poets during the Harlem Renaissance. He wrote about how African Americans were segregated, treated unequally
The speaker compares the dream to a raisin, a sore, rotten meat, “It's an image that helps readers appreciate how hard and difficult it is to swallow the reality of dreams permanently postponed” (Zappia). Each image makes the reader think of the dream that African Americans had postponed, and how leaving it ended up with consequences. The very first time imagery is show is when the speaker asks if the dream dries up “like a raisin in the sun"(2.2) A raisin was once a grape, it looked pretty and full of juice. But the longer it was left outside in the sun all that juiciness gets sucked out. The speaker is saying that that is exactly what will happen to the dream. The longer this dream of theirs is put aside, the more shriveled up it will get. The hope to achieve this dream that was once there will be gone. The next image shown is when the speaker suggests the dream could “fester like a sore” (2.3). When thinking of a sore, one thinks of an infected wound. If that wound is not given attention, and just left there then it will get infected, just like a deferred dream. The dream will also get infected due to all the lies, and injustice felt by African Americans. Then the speaker is asking whether the dream will “stink like rotten meat” (2.5) Rotten mean, is not a pleasant smell or thought. It gives a nasty mental picture that one does not want to go near, and just like a sore, it will become worse as time passes by. It just
His or her possible answers are set up as questions. They are suggesting that there is more than one possible outcome to what happens when a dream is deferred. Like author Davidas says, “those rhetorical questions are not meant to be answered at all but to challenge the reader/listener and force him into thinking and, hopefully, into reading and correcting some of the injustice and inequities inflicted upon the African-American people of Harlem.” The questions/answers are to show how the dreams of the Africans Americans were abused. They were never truly given their freedom even though the Civil War had ended slavery. With these questions the speaker is showing the There is just one time in which the speaker does not answer in a form of a question. But there is just one time where the speaker does not answer in the form of a question. In the third stanza, the speaker states that the dream “[m]aybe just sags/ like a heavy load” (3.1-2). Making it a statement makes it less powerful than the last line of the poem, “Or does it explode?” (4.1). Although it is just another question, the italics make it more forceful and emphasize that it could be the answer to the question addressed in line 1. With this line the speaker is saying that once the dream can no longer be contained, it will explode. Explosions are never seen as a positive thing, the cause chaos, and get people hurt. That is what the speaker is saying.