Dream Deferred by Langston Hughes

Dream Deferred by Langston Hughes

The entirety of this poem consists of many hypothetical questions that are offered to imagine what is the end result of a lost dream. To describe these, Hughes utilizes many words with a very negative connotation. He uses words such as, "fester", "sore", "stink", "rotten meat". With descriptions accompanied by these words, Hughes seems to be describing the feeling of a dream that was denied from you as something that sticks with you and brings much anxiety and consternation to the psyche. The very last line is very peculiar, as Hughes writes, "or does it explode?". With this line of the poem the very last line, italicized, and completely irregular with the previous questions, it seems as though there must be a large meaning behind it. It is very certain that since this poem was written by Langston Hughes, a poet who placed racism and his black culture as the main subject of most his poems, it has a theme that relates to the oppressed blacks of the early 1900's. When he writes about the deferred dream exploding, its as if he is proclaiming that the end result of his people's dreams being torn to shreds is their eminent reaction of anger and call for a change. That is what Hughe's means by the explosion.