Harlem, What happens to a dream deferred?

Langston Hughes asks, “What happens to a dream deferred,” yet we never find the answer.  Hughes gives the reader more questions, and more suggestions with no definite answer.  What is the dream that he is speaking of, and what happens when it is deferred?

A dream is something that is desired, possible a goal.  Hughes does not tell the reader what the dream is that he’s speaking of, he lets the reader think about the dreams that they may have or have once had.  However, what Hughes does is demonstrate how important a dream can be and how shattering it can be when it is not fulfilled. 

Harlem was written in 1951, several years after the Harlem Renaissance.  This was a time after the prosperity for black people looked promising; this was now a time of despair, a time when the desires of blacks seemed unimportant.  Hughes had experienced a time of hope and now he was living in a time of what seemed utter hopelessness.  What does happen to a dream deferred?

When a dream is left to chance, or put on hold, “does it dry up like a raisin in the sun?”  Hughes is showing how racism can place dreams on hold when a society has no tolerance for the other.  A dried raisin has no promise; it is useless and never again appealing. 

When a dream is not developed, does it “fester like a sore, and then run?”  A sore is painful, yet when it runs; it could be a sign of infection, something that may never heal.  Infection can also spread from one source to another until others around you are infected and their dreams now become deferred.

When a dream is not given into, “does it stink like rotten meat?”  Rotten meat becomes useless, like an unfilled dream.  Once, both were useful, yet once neither is used, both become worthless.  Dreams can die and if that happens, they can take on the same stench of rotten meat. 

Maybe a delayed dream “crust and sugar over like a syrupy sweet?”  A once delectable sweet that has not been used can ferment and harden until it is no longer desired.  As a dream that has been left to chance for to long can lose its desire and be overcome with hardened feelings. 

Or “maybe it just sags like a heavy load.”  A heavy load weighs you down; it makes your road hard to walk.  A heavy load will cause you to give up on your dreams because the obstacles outweigh the dreams.  Or maybe the deferred dream will “explode,” making you hardened to life and unhappy with what you have seen and experienced.

Langston Hughes does not answer the question as to what happens to a dream deferred, however he shares enough possibilities to make the reader understand the importance of realizing their dreams through the struggles placed on them.  During his time, this poem had a great impact on realizing your dreams because society with its racism placed roadblocks on the path to ones dreams.

            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?