Poème "Deferred" de Langston Hughes.

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moments : journeys, difficult childhood, money, work → getting goods

C. Music of a community in transition

Hughes solves the problem of marrying the technique and the subject matter that is to say the popular music and the community in transition.

He stressed in the preface to the book the value of joining the individual’s observations :

In terms of current Afro-American popular music and the sources from which it progressed—jazz, ragtime, swing, blues, boogie-woogie, and be-bop—this poem on contemporary Harlem, (like be-bop), is marked by conflicting changes, sudden nuances, and passages sometimes in the manner of a jam session, sometimes the popular song, punctuated by the disc-tortions of the music of a community in transition.

That is why, Hughes mixes blues and jazz in this poem. Jazz has for chracteristic the sudden improvisation, that can be seen where the rythm speeds up suddenly at one moment.

The fact that the stanzas are closed with the same sentence at the beginning and at the end can be considered as a refrain, it’s fluid and repetetive which makes me think about blues techniques.

So, through the rythm and the musical side of this poem, Hughes transforms this individual summary of a black man into a collective message for a community in transition in Harlem who mainly expresse thanks to music.

TRANSITION :

As we said, the narrator seems to evolve towards success. To remember it, we can notice first 3 stanzas, and their first and last lines. He starts off unsure about the dream he’s pursuing, and by the end of the stanza he has resolved to do them. He thinks he’ll actually have the chance of reaching these goals. And through symbols, music and apostrophes, the poem seems to deliver a message for all african american. But judging by the poem, this african american narrator probably didn’t get these dreams. In fact, all these dreams can’t come true and that is the big conclusion of the poem : actually a negative and melancholic one.

III. A Turning point :

A. so long : duration, time landmarks + The Island

→ So Long p251

→ Tell Me p231

The narrator underscores the fact that the proceedings of this african american dream are very long and seem to be endless.

B. A negative conclusion :

The gist of the poem lies in an ironical juxtaposition of the words in intalics : « Montage of a dream deferred ». If the title is related to the poem as a whole then you can realized that his dreams weren’t fulfilled and were just put aside because life kept happening and so it ties into the title of the poem which is "Deferred".

And this can finally be understood through the study of the structure of the poem : The structure has two big distinctions: some stanzas are written normally and some are italicized.

The stanzas that are written normally may represent the speaker’s current thoughts : He also talks about possible projects for the future.

On the other hand, the italicized stanzas may represent past dreams and desires of the speaker. In short, even if the poem seemed to be evolving from hypothesis to succes, the final great sentences change the direction. This list remained a list forever and that is why, the narrator talks about death just before.

- death :

In lines 37-40 the speaker starts to talk about heaven as if he has already died and is looking back on his life. When he starts talking about "Glory"it is as though he will acomplish this in the afterlife because it seems impossible to do in segregation, inequality and racism in the United States.

C. + Island : p272 : dream deferred : a real dream.

A day dream of equality. Nothing can be fulfilled in this segregated and racism atmosphere. All remains a dream. All remains a list. It will only remain a draft.

CONCLUSION :

Despite the very strong autobiographical part of the poem which stages an african american man who sums up the main desires in his life, « Deferred » has for main subject, the african american dream of emancipation and freedom. It is hard to point out because the individual side is deep but lots of his dreams can be considered as symbols. He tackles the idea of unfairness, education and family in a musical way to gather the whole community. Finally, the gist of the poem stays in the final part with the great sentence which is also the title of the section : Montage of a dream deferred which makes the reader understand that all this story will remain a list of things, and that is why we can affirm that this poem which puts the emphasis on « deferred » constitues a turning point in this section : « Montage of a Dream deferred ».