Harlem

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1951

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Summary

Background

Poem Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Literary Devices

Themes

Dreams

“Harlem” begins with a direct reference to a primary theme: dreams. Specifically, it asks “What happens to a dream deferred?” (Line 1). Using the indefinite article “a” instead of the definite article “the” widens the scope of the exploration.

Dreams in the poem are, in part, individual hopes held by people living in Harlem. But readers who can identify with the disappointments of blocked or delayed dreams may certainly see themselves in the poem, too.

Most specifically, the poem explores a collective dream for justice and an end to racial inequality. Titling the poem “Harlem” makes that clear even when it is read as a work separate from the book length Montage of a Dream Deferred.

Hughes’s poem examines one of the most cherished pieces of the American mythos: the American Dream and its promise that prosperity is achievable for anyone. Bigger, brighter, better futures for Americans and their children is a major part of the dream. “Harlem” asks what happens when the American Dream is made inaccessible to so many of its citizens. The poem exposes rot in the foundation.

Change

Hughes’s poem explores change. Each of the possible effects of thwarted dreams involves transformation. Raisins dry into dust, healthy tissue develops sores, good meat turns rotten, and sweets become unpalatable. Dreams that have no hope of coming true wither, sicken, rot, and dissolve. The burden of having dreamt them threatens to unbalance and break those who hold on to the useless dreams and cannot let go.

The transformations involve time. The opening reference to deferment evokes the sense that the dream is forever spooling out of reach, held at bay by some outside force that has decided never to allow it to come to fruition. The major images carry past, present, and future within them. For example, “Does it dry up / like a raisin in the sun” (Lines 2-3) holds all three. The past is the original state—the dream in its purest form. The speaker’s words form a kind of present—a place where the dreams are needed but are still on hold. The future lies in desire and possibility—the direction of the transformations named in the poem.

“Harlem” demands a different kind of change. The promised—or threatened—explosion in the final line promises that bottled up hopes become weapons of destruction, dismantling obstacles in ways that damage everyone nearby. Instead, the poem calls for transformation that turns the despair of deferred dreams into hope.

Power

Langston Hughes’s poem examines power and what may happen when access to it is denied. The premise of the opening question is that the dreams of Harlem have been deferred. It’s not up for debate and the speaker doesn’t waste time being coy about it. They don’t bother identifying who or what has kept those dreams out of reach, assuming that like the speaker, the reader knows to attribute fault to the mechanisms of systemic racism and oppression.

The second stanza of the poem theorizes the adverse effects of unfulfilled dreams. The drying, festering, stinking, and crusting are all results of the inexorable force of time, but each of the described processes could be stopped or ameliorated by human intervention. The fact that no one bothers to take the raisins out of sun, heal the infected wound, refrigerate the meat, or protect the candy from crystallizing is part of “poem’s broader Caribbean context [...] deep historical connections between sugar, slavery, and labor” (Challener, Scott. “Langston Hughes: ‘Harlem.’” 2019. Poetry Foundation).

The third stanza offers a possible reaction to the injustice of the prolonged wait. If the dream “sags / like a heavy load” (Lines 9-10) then the carriers may falter under the weight—or they may endure as they always have. But the fourth and final stanza makes another suggestion: “Or does it explode?” This threatened violent outburst enacts an overdue release of pent-up energy and an active seizure of power.

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By Langston Hughes

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Harlem

Themes

Dreams

Change

Power

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