Explain the major theme explored in the selections that you read from Montages of a Dream Deferred by Langston Hughes.

The major theme of Langston Hughes’s Montages of a Dream Deferred is the deferred, or delayed, American dream of African Americans. The poem is about how African Americans failed to achieve their goals in time:

This year, maybe, do you think I can graduate?

I’m already two years late.Dropped out six months when I was seven,

a year when I was eleven,

then got put back when we come North.

To get through high high school at twenty's kind of late–

But maybe this year I can graduate.

The poem also depicts how African Americans had to keep postponing their needs with a hope that someday they would be able to obtain what they desired:

Maybe now I can have that white enamel stove

I dreamed about when we first fell in love

eighteen years ago.

But you know,

rooming and everything

then kids,

cold-water flat and all that.

But now my daughter’s married

And my boy's most grown–

quit school to work

and where we're moving

there ain't no stove–

Maybe I can buy that white enamel stove!

However, despite their deferred dreams, the poem shows the refusal of African Americans to give up easily and let go of their dreams of a better life. Their dreams may have been delayed, but they did not lose hope.

Explanation:

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