Langston Hughes
When reading Dream Deferred, I couldn't help but feel inspired. Even though the author confronts the act of deferring dreams as a bad thing, he also dictates that there is hope for dreams that have been put on the shelf for another time. Even when they seem to "dry up like a raisin in the sun", or to "fester like a sore", these dreams seemingly have minds of their own. And yet- if these dreams are significant, meaningful, or important enough, they have the ability to reach an action potential and arouse an inevitable confrontation, hence "or does it explode?" In the context of the author's own experiences however, I understand the context of the poem as during the Civil Rights Movement, or in the process there of. Hughes applies this great "dream" as a hope for freedom and equality. After years of letting the dream sit and weigh down the souls of African Americans, the dream started to become more and more apparent as many people together became more aware of its presence on the shelf and their ability to reach it. Hughes describes the tension of just barely becoming able to reach their desire as a potential for an explosion.
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