Langston Hughes' "Dream Deferred"

DREAM DEFERRED


What happens to a dream deferred?
Does it dry up
Like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore--
And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over--
Like a syrupy sweet?
Maybe it just sags
like a heavy load.
Or does it explode?

Langston Hughes




Meaning 
Langston Hughes' poem Dream Deferred is a question to African Americans whose dreams and ambitions have pushed away as they have been socially marginalized. Hughes asks the reader if they will allow their dreams to fade away "dry up like a raisin in the sun", or "crust and sugar over like a syrupy sweet?" by which he means be hidden and replaced with subservience and faked contentment. The line "sags like a heavy load" speaks of depression and stagnation, of the denied dreams weighing heavy on the mind and dragging the dreamer down.
The poem is very dark until the final line. Hughes has hidden a suggestion in the form of a question. By asking "Or does it explode" he performs inception, urging the marginalized minority to not let their dreams be destroyed by their disadvantages, and instead do something about it.
The message of Dream Deferred is contained in the intense imagery Hughes chose to include. Everything he says in the poem is kind of nasty. It makes it impossible to visualize the fate of the deferred dream as anything but negative and undesirable.
I chose Hughes' poem because to me it is iconic of the Harlem Renaissance period and the literary tone of it. Langston Hughes was one of the most famous of the writers of the time, and when I think of Harlem I think of his works. I personally dislike this specific poem because the imagery is gross to me, and it took me forever to figure out the message of it. I just felt i had to include it for the iconic value.