Like A Dream Deferred

The speaker suggests that a dream deferred may also stink like a rotten meat. But the question is that how meat rots? When fresh meat is left out for a long time then it is attacked by bacteria that make meat rot and when it rots then it stinks. So delayed dream also have some agency or forces like bacteria that make it rot or put off. And the stink that is emitted as a result of rotten meat spread all around and become offensive and unbearable for others. In these lines poet suggests how, after making dreamer devastated and frustrated, dream deferred starts to have an adverse and catastrophic impact on society. A dream, which begins as “syrupy sweet,” crusts over while it waits, in vain, to be enjoyed. When a dream becomes hard like a crust
Black people were relegated to low-paying menial jobs, denied use of the same public facilities as whites, and denied access to higher education. Frustration with inferior status was becoming a powder keg ready to erupt. This deplorable plight of the black and building resentment between the black and the white were the reasons for this poem was penned down by Langston Hughes, one of the torchbearers of Harlem Renaissance. The two things immediately stand out from the rest of the poem when this poem is read from this perspective- the fourth line where he compares a ‘deferred dream’ with a sore and the last italicized sentence which warns about an explosion. Throughout the history in many ways, these people have suffered the pain of injustice. They were bestowed with sores by their brutal masters. Thus, the poet Hughes is able to, with help of this simile; vividly describe the plight of his people. He finally warns that if their dreams are deferred for long, it may lead to an explosion, a revolution of sorts, and a great deal of destruction always follows the explosion. The result of American Africans dream deferred was the Harlem Riot. The Harlem riot was the match to the tinder that had lain dormant for