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.
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