Description:.
Before we began A Raisin In the Sun, we looked at the play’s epigraph, Langston Hughes’ poem, “Harlem”. In the poem, Hughes raises and explores a question: What happens to a dream deferred? Throughout the poem, Hughes contemplates potential responses to this question, all of them posed rhetorically to his audience. In the play that follows this epigraph, the four central members of the Younger family, Walter, Ruth, Lena, and Beneatha, each see their respective dream(s) confront personal, familial, and societal forces that threaten deferral. Ultimately, the journey forced upon each character’s dream is unique and speaks to the myriad of ways to fulfill Hughes’ interrogation.
“Harlem”
By Langston Hughes
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?
Prompt:
Using evidence from at least two characters in A Raisin In the Sun, answer Hughes’ question.
In your answer:
- Explain how the characters you choose represent specific lines from Hughes’ poem. For instance, whose dream “festers like a sore” or “crusts and sugars over”?
- Explain what theme Hansberry is using that character to express.
*Each character you explore should be supported with direct evidence from the text.*
Thesis Statement Template:
In her play, A Raisin in the Sun, Lorraine Hansberry shows readers that when dreams are deferred (theme(s) that your characters are used to express), through the way that (Character)’s dream (Line/Question from “Harlem”) and (Character)‘s dream (Line/Question from “Harlem”).