Life Is Full Of Dreams In Langston Hughes's Harlem

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Life is full of dreams. Even more so of dreams that have wilted away with the breath of time. Some dreams one may look upon with regret, some with bittersweet feelings, and some with a sense of “what if.” Moreover, some dreams fester in one’s mind, ever painful, but can heal when given the right treatment. Looking back on the few years that I have lived, many of my aspirations in life correspond with the similes in Langston Hughes’ “Harlem.” The short but inspirational open-form poem addresses what happens to aspirations that are postponed or lost. The brief, mind provoking questions posed throughout the poetry allowed me to reflect on the effects of delaying or abandoning my dreams. A dream which has sugared over, a bittersweet childhood aspiration;…show more content…
My childhood love of sea animals made its way into the first steps of high school and drove me to believe that my path led to the ocean to study the living wonders of its depths. Just as I matured, so did my aspirations, and this dream over time “… crust and sugar over— like a syrupy sweet” (lines 7-8). Sugar brings energy and life, just as this dream brought life into the wondering mind of my adolescence. But this dream has been out too long and crusted over, sweet once upon a time. Just as a child loves sweets, my young mind loved this dream and held onto it for as long as possible, like a child unwilling to part with a piece of candy. I look upon this dream with fondness and reflect upon what could have been with an underlying sense of accomplishment. Although this dream was deferred, it led me to the path that I continue on…show more content…
My love for helping others, physical activity, and the mechanics and interworking of the human body have exploded into the dream that I hope will stay afire with the spark of determination. For once in my life, I feel confident about a dream. This dream has to do with a conscious goal, hope, and aim for the future. This dream, although once differed, has exploded into reality. Although many may speculate that this final line of the poem condones negative implications, my delving deeper into the meaning brings a spark of excitement that will never be extinguished. These dreams, though few out of many, correspond with Langston Hughes’ “Harlem” and have shaped me into the person I am today. Hughes' expressed a feeling of intense disdain of deferring dreams, but I see deferred dreams as a sign of growth. Just as a growing flower has to push aside the soil of the earth to emerge into the world, so must we push aside dreams to rise into the light of the goals we are destined to achieve. Once determined, then hopeful, now a painful reminder of what could have been, the deferred dreams of my past have helped to form the dream that has
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