Free response Harlem

For my free response this week I want to look back at the poem Harlem by Hughes. I feel this poem is very deep but we didn't have enough time to dive fully into it. In this poem I really want to look at the first line. “What happens to a dream deferred?”. I feel this line is very hard to grasp. The author is asking such a hard question and one with no possible way of solving it. We can only use are imagination to picture what would happen. Would a dream deferred be positive or negative? Could it mean that a better more promising dream took its place or is it simply filed away waiting to be rediscovered? Another question is why did the author use deferred in the sentence? Why not forgotten, postponed or delayed? I feel that these questions can only be answered by the reader and each reader will uncover a different answer. There is no right or universal answer.

Later in the poem the author describes a dream deferred as a negative instance. “fester like a sore..... stink like rotten meat?” line 4. He compares the deferred dream to a sore and rotten meat. His descriptions make the reader think that maybe a dream deferred is a bad thing. I feel like the author wants the reader to think about his past and all the dreams the reader once had but now has to give up because of the practicality of those dreams. I feel that the poem Harlem brings to light an often looked over aspect of maturing. As we get older and undertake more of the responsibility of being a member of society we tend to forget what we once dreamed of.