jazz-inspired impressions of theHarlem neighborhood of Manhattan where he was living and writing in the years after World War II.

A montage is a juxtaposition of fragmentary components ordered to create a coherent meaning, and many of the other poems emulate the rhythm and textures of African-American music. Hughes suggests through the title that the collection of sketches and riffs on contemporary Black life in Harlem has as its ultimate subject the notion of the "dream deferred," and this poem serves as an introduction of that recurring theme.

As a national mecca of the fruits of African American culture in the first half of the twentieth century, like music, literature, politics and art, Harlem was an epicenter for the collective aspirations of Black America. Yet the fabled neighborhood also contained the same poverty, oppression, and disenfranchisement that Hughes would have known from his native Missouri and its Jim Crow traditions in line with the former Confederacy.

Far from being a promised land, slick, soulful, and gritty Harlem is also a place that robs, cheat, kills and exploits, breaking hearts and crushing dreams. There, one encounters the pinnacle of American success and establishment for those who pursued their dreams undauntedly. But the dream of many is deferred—passed over or put off—because the consequences of a marginalized existence render them defeated, devoid of confidence and courage, or worse. The various images of rupture and decay in the poem suggest that the costs of not pursuing a free and authentic existence despite the structural obstacles is spiritual death.

This short poem by Langston Hughes actually comprises a series of metaphors about the central question of a "dream deferred" and what happens when this occurs. However, all of the metaphors run along similar lines: Hughes imagines the deferred dream as a variety of perishable items, incorporating foodstuffs such as meat which will rot if left too long, and an old sweet which will "crust over" if it is not consumed in time, as well as the comparison to a raisin drying up in the sun.

Hughes also suggests that a deferred dream might take on the character of a sore which will eventually burst and "run over" after a long period of festering.

Finally, he compares the deferred dream to a "heavy load" which will weigh upon the dreamer until, potentially, it explodes.

These are all varied metaphors, but they convey the same thing. Hughes is suggesting that a dream cannot simply be deferred indefinitely and expected to remain the same. Rather than remaining as fresh as it ever was, the dream will begin to fester and go bad. It may even change the character of the dreamer who has been forced to wait. Ultimately, the dream may express itself in unexpected ways, if it does not dry up completely, and could even cause harm if left until it explodes.

In the poem "Harlem," Langston Hughes creates a central metaphor surrounding a dream by comparing a dream to multiple images of death and destruction in order to ask what happens to a "dream deferred," meaning a dream that has been delayed in being fulfilled.

He first compares a delayed dream to a "raisin in the sun," implying the dream is dried up and shriveled. Next, he asks if a delayed dream becomes infected "like a sore." Untreated cuts become infected and painful, leading to other major health problems, sometimes even death; therefore, in comparing a delayed dream to an infected wound, Hughes likens a delayed dream to something that causes severe pain and is destructive, even deadly. A third comparison is of a delayed dream to "rotten meat," which is meat that has gone uneaten for so long it is now dangerous for anyone to consume. By comparing a delayed dream to inedible meat, Hughes is wondering if dreams that go unfulfilled for a long time become so painful that they are noxious to the dreamer.

A fourth comparison is that of a delayed dream to sugar or syrup, which implies the dreamer starts seeing the dream as having been sugarcoated, meaning more appealing than it actually is. An example of seeing a dream as sugarcoated could be an African American wishing for an end to segregation but being led to believe that sharing the world with white people would lead to even more abuses and inequalities. By being led to believe such a fallacy, an African American may believe his or her present situation is better than the situation he or she dreams of, which would make him or her see the dream as sugarcoated.

Two final comparisons are that of a delayed dream to a load that is too heavy to bear and to something that explodes. Hughes's final comparison of a delayed dream to an explosion is the most powerful because it significantly contrasts with his other images of death and destruction. By comparing a delayed dream to an explosion, he implies that when dreams are prevented from being fulfilled, the dreamer builds up enough energy until the dreamer explodes in a burst of energy to fulfill the dream, just as we saw with the dawning of the Civil Rights Movement.

It is vitally important to remember that this poem is set during the Great Depression of the 1930s, a time of unprecedented want and poverty, which of course imapcted those who were looked down upon by society--African Americans--the worst. It was a time when even the slightest of price rises could herald disaster for poor families trying to make ends meet and a time when being black usually involved a crushing lack of opportunity and poverty with little chance of gaining employment to earn money. The writers of the Harlem Renaissance reacted to the discrimination that they and their neighbours who lived in Harlem faced in their work, and this poem powerfully evokes the economic and emotional distress of African Americans living in Harlem, "On the edge of hell," facing the brute and harsh realities of discrimination and lack of opportunity. Note how the price rises are refered to:

Now when the man at the corner store

Says sugar's gone up another two cents,

And bread one,

And there's a new tax on cigarettes--

We remember the job we never had,

Never could get,

And can't have now

Because we're coloured.

Note the tone of anger and indignation that accompanies these lines as the speaker tries to express his pent up frustration and rage at the situation that he, and so many others like him, face.

Langston Hughes "Harlem" (also commonly referred to by its first line, "What happens to a dream deferred?") is part of a larger group of poems published in 1951, Montage of a Dream Deferred. Like other poems in Montage, "Harlem" reflects the experience of Blacks who concentrated in New York City during the 1920s, sparking the Harlem Renaissance, a burst of literary and cultural creativity that gave a voice to a large population of dispossessed Americans who often felt like strangers in their own land.

"Harlem" is framed by its series of rhetorical questions and vivid imagery centered on the reality facing Blacks at that time—dreams of equality and opportunity that remained just dreams. Like the jazz that pervaded Harlem in the 1920s and onward, the poem is informally structured in what I would call "modified" free verse. Although the lines are very irregular in their meter, but unlike traditional free verse, Hughes uses structure and rhyme in parts.

The poem is highly metaphorical and is built on images designed to objectify the abstract concept of Hughes' central argument. The opening lines establish the main theme and provide the first, and mildest, of the images employed by Hughes to describe what the "dream deferred" is in a visual context:

What happens to a dream deferred?

Does it dry up
like a raisin in the sun?

This image is perhaps the most well known in the poem because it was used by playwright Lorraine Hansberry for A Raisin in the Sun in 1959.

Even though the poem appears to be without a traditional structure, if we exclude the first and last lines, we can see that Hughes has written a self-contained (that is, one image) quatrain (4 lines), followed by another self-contained image in a tercet (3 lines), and then concluded with a couplet and another image. Within the quatrain, we have a rhyme scheme of abcb; within the tercet, ded; and within the couplet, fg, followed closely by the last line, which rhymes with the second line of the couplet. One can also argue that the couplet and last line also function as a tercet in that the last line is syntactically connected to the previous two lines, with a rhyme scheme of fgg.

In his choice of images, Hughes builds cleverly to a powerful and jarring image. The first four images—a dried up raisin, a festering sore, rotten meat, a crusted over sweet—are all images of decay, consistent with the spiritual decay that results from dreams unrealized. But the last image—a dream that explodes—emphasized by its italics, speaks to the possibility that if dreams become permanently unreachable those whose dreams are thwarted may employ violence to realize them, a theme that appears much later in Martin Luther King's "A Letter from Birmingham Jail."

In the poem Harlem, Langston Hughes utilizes free verse with an irregular meter.  This means that he stresses different syllables in each line and the length of the lines vary considerably.  The use of six questions is done with the intention of providing uncertainty.  All of these things, when taken together, make the reader feel uneasy, uncomfortable and nervous.  The feelings that are elicited reinforce the poem's theme which is the frustration felt by African-Americans.  Langston Hughes poems are, by his own admission, written like the musical styles of jazz, ragtime, and the blues.  These types of music are marked by sudden changes and sharp interjections.  The style of free verse with irregular meter lends itself to connections with these music styles. 

First, the speaker asks, "What happens to a dream deferred?"  By this, he seems to be asking the fate of a dream that has been put off or postponed.  The poem is sort of an exploration of all the things that such a dream might feel like, ending in what seems like an inevitable eventuality.

Then, he lists several comparisons, mostly similes in which he points to the similarity between dream deferred and something else. The line "Does it dry up / like a raisin in the sun?" compares the put-off dream to a hard little dry raisin that is no longer enjoyable or even edible.  It was once probably sweet and tasty.  Then he asks, "Or [does it] fester like a sore -- / And then run?" comparing the dream to an open wound that has putrefied and begun to ooze pus.  So, this wound is something that could have been taken care of, but instead of healing, it has become infected and painful.  Next, he asks if the deferred dream "stink[s] like rotten meat?"  Again, something that could have been nutritious and delicious has become unusable, a nuisance, something that everyone in its vicinity is aware of because the smell is so grotesque.  Finally, he asks if the dream "crust[s] and sugar[s] over -- / like a syrupy sweet?"  Here, he compares the dream to something that might once have been tasty and choice but has become kind of sickening over time.

In the final simile, he suggests that the dream "sags / like a heavy load."  This means the dream would weigh one down rather than lift one up.  The dream, put off or to the side, is not an inspiration, the way we typically think of dreams, but a burden to bear.  Finally, in the only metaphor of the poem, the speaker suggests that the dream deferred will "explode," like a bomb.  In this comparison, the dream does damage and affects everyone with a violent force.  If a person, then, is forced to ignore their dreams, or if they are constantly told that their dream cannot be achieved just now, they are eventually going to get angry, and that anger could boil over in such a way that their dream can no longer be ignored.  Because the poem is called "Harlem" and because the poet is African American, many people interpret the dream, here, as the dream of racial equality in America, although it could apply to many different dreams.

Langston Hughes' poem, "Harlem," refers to "dreams deferred" in the first line:

What happens to a dream deferred?

This would apply to the African-American because of the promises made and inferred with Abraham Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation of the 1860s that had still not been delivered by the 1950s.

The image of a "raisin in the sun" may refer to slaves laboring for years without freedom, to bring wealth to others who had no regard for them, their families, etc. One researcher proposes that the image is used to suggest the grape, juicy and luscious, which dries up while left in the sun due to inattention. This could describe the lost dream, or the slave. Symbolically, it could refer to the scourge of slavery that robbed black men, women and children of all the merits of freedom, aging them quickly, separating families: sucking the vitality from these people and stripping them of hope.

The image of a festering sore may relate to the physical abuse the slaves suffered at the hands of their owners. The abuse was not limited to only the men, and did not always show itself in physical cruelty. Symbolically, the "festering sore" might be what slavery was, spreading through the "land of liberty," sordid and repulsive.

The line "stink like rotten meat" could refer to the those slaves who were beaten to death or those black men lynched by vigilantes. It is suggested that...

Hughes uses this image because blacks were often sold rotten meat in ghetto groceries…

"Or crust and sugar over—like a syrupy sweet" does not denote an immediate threat...

...but the image again connotes waste, neglect, and decay..

Sweets last a long time, like hopes and dreams, but even over time, they can change in appearance or even lose their taste—no longer something appealing. Onwuchekwa Jemie is a Nigerian poet and scholar. He sees this reference to the sweet as a representation of…

American dreams of equality and success that are denied to most African Americans.

It might be symbolic of the way that slave owners tried to cover over the shameful light that abolitionists cast over slavery. Some slave owners tried to use the Bible as a way to prove that slavery was not immoral.

The line "Maybe it just sags / like a heavy load" may not just refer to the hard work that slaves were required to do, but might also allude to the burden blacks carried even when the law said they were "free and equal." Things like the inability to vote, lynchings and violence, segregation, and the inability for "equal opportunity employment," among other things, are burdens the black race carried.

While Langston Hughes, whose poem was published in 1951, could not have known, the "explosion" mentioned in the last line of the poem is prophetic, seen with the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s.

Hughes's narrator uses five similes to ponder what happens to a dream deferred (deferred means put off or delayed). (A simile is a comparison of two unalike things using the words like or as.) First, he asks if the deferred dream dries up "like a raisin in the sun," withering and shrinking up. Next, he asks if it "fester[s] like a sore" and then runs (with pus). Third, he wonders if it will begin to "stink like rotten meat" or, fourth, "crust and sugar over— / like a syrupy sweet." Fifth, he suggests that it might sag "like a heavy load," weighing the dreamer down, even depressing them.

In the final line of the poem, however, Hughes uses a metaphor, a comparison of two unalike things where we say that one thing IS another; metaphors are understood to be stronger than similes. Further, the metaphor is contained in a line that stands alone, like the initial question it answers. Finally, it is italicized. Therefore, it is emphasized in three different ways. In it, the narrator asks, "Or does it explode?," comparing the dream to something that can explode, like a bomb. A bomb does a great deal of damage, so this metaphor implies that the dream deferred can harm not only the dreamer but many others as well. Perhaps whoever is forcing the dreamer to wait on fulfilling this dream will be injured by its deferment too. We might begin to consider what this dream could be. The fact that the author is African American, the fact that he wrote the poem in 1951 (before the Civil Rights Era), and the title provide clues that the "dream" might be a dream of racial equality. If whites continue to put off or delay this dream, Hughes seems to suggest, it will not simply harm those African Americans who want to achieve the dream but also those whites who prevent them from doing so. Those who oppress will be as damaged by the dream's effects as those who are oppressed, because a bomb injures anyone around it (unlike a dried-up raisin, a sore, a bad smell, and so forth).

I have often seen this poem referred to as "What happens to a dream deferred" rather than "Harlem," which I think is very interesting when you think about the poem's theme.

The major theme for me is one of civil rights and the anger and frustration inherent in the struggle for them (see the second link below). This is implied through the title. Harlem, of course, was a hotbed for civil rights during the 50's and 60's (see the third link below). Of course, the first line is an allusion to Dr. King's famous "I Have a Dream" speech about racial equality. The poem then posits what will happen if we continue to defer or postpone King's dream of racial equality.

The final line, "Or does it explode" suggests to the reader that if the dream is always postponed, then violence will erupt not only in Harlem but also across the country wherever civil rights are repressed.