Olukemi Akinde

A dream deferred
The time is 1951 and America is prospering in a way it never has before. In a mere 175
years America has managed to become the strongest military unit in the world and the economy
post world war II is booming! There is a rise of suburban homes and consumer goods are
accessible to more people than ever! Families are moving into the outskirts of cities into nice
suburban residences with home appliances like washing machines and radios. It seems as though
everyone is finally attaining the American dream; everyone, except for African Americans that is.
Even after over two million Africans joined the military to serve and fight for American freedom
outside American soil, when they returned they were not welcomed, honored or celebrated.
Instead African Americans watched the world around them flourish and thrive as they were
stagnate and consistent in their struggles. Langston Hughes, an African American poet was able
to capture this internal perplexity that occurred in the hearts of African Americans in the 1950s.
The poem entitled Harlem is arguably one of Hughes most notable poems. The poem asks the
question, What happens to a dream deferred?
It is not a random coincidence that Langston Hughes asks the question What happens to
a dream deferred? in the timing that he did. While the American Dream was more attainable
than it has ever been to White Americans, this was not the same for African Americans living in
those times. If one could imagine living inside of a grocery store with an abundance of food,
cakes and drinks all with different flavors and brands, and then if one could the imagine the
grocery market filled with individuals who are happily ingesting the food, and then continue to
imagine one starving in the midst of that abundance; that is what it felt like to be African

American in the 1950s. No different from every other American in the country African
Americans had a dream; a dream of providing for their family and reaching economic security,
but because of the skin color the dream you shared with everyone else, has to be deferred.
Harlem is written in four stanzas, most of the lines are phrased as questions. The first
question asking what happens to a dream deferred. The rest of the poem is actually a response
and the second question is actually a response. Most of the responses, instead of being
declarative statements, are questions! The first line in the second stanza reads Does it dry
up like a raisin in the sun? , it is one the most, if not most notable lines from this pome and was
even used as the title and the premise of Lorraine Hansberrys celebrated play A Raisin in the
Sun. The image of a raisin in the sun is an interesting choice of metaphor. As readers we can
first visualize a grape. A healthy and plum fruit that is full with succulent and nutritious juices.
We understand the sun played a vital role in bringing the grape to its ripe and ready state. But
Hughes compares a dreamed deferred to a raisin in the sun. After the grape is ripe and it is left in
its original state to long, the juices that once gave the raisin its plumpness and roundness begin to
dry up. The raisin begins to shrivel, it decreases in size and luster; it is but a shell of its past
form. Langston Hughes implies the same transformation occurs to a dream when left in the
stagnate dwelling of ones mind where it once blossomed.

Because I could not stop for death

Death, often a taboo topic raising emotions of fear or even sorrow, when written about by
Emily Dickson in her Poem Because I could not stop for death instead presents a mood of
tranquility and even peace. Dickson, an affluent member of the middle class 18th century
American society, often wrote about death and dying. In this particular piece death is personified
as a well-mannered suitor offering her a carriage ride through the town. As readers we can
suggest the speaker of the poem is Emily Dickson herself for the poem is written in first person.
Though the poem is written in first person, it seems as though Ms. Dickson does not write to a
particular intended audience, but instead is recalling the day she was whisked away by death.
Though the mood of the poem is peaceful and serene, the tone appears to be a bit satirical. For
those of us who do not wish to die or end or own lives, death is an unexpected and unwanted
event. As a writer, readers would relate to a personification of death being a vulgar or ominous
individual. Emily Dickson instead chose to hide her undesirable emotions toward death in her
sarcasm of deaths chivalry.
The poem Because I could not stop for death has six stanzas, each stanza contains 4
lines, this type of poem is called a quatrain. The first two lines of the poem immediately lets
readers know what the poem is about. The first two lines read: Because I could not stop for
Death He kindly stopped for me, based on these two lines alone readers know Emily Dickson
does not escape death. The next two lines in the stanza are a bit unorthodox. Emily mentions that
her and death are in a horse carriage and finishes the stanza by informing readers immortality is
also in the carriage with them. Death and immortality naturally defy one another, but it seems as
though Emily believes though death ends one life, it also leads to another life that is eternal and
never ending. By mentioning immorality at the beginning of the poem Emily Dickson

foreshadows the information she gives readers at the end of the poem, that centuries have gone
by since she has died.
Though we do not know when we will go, one thing is for certain we are born and with
time we will all die. Emily Dickson takes us through the stages of life while on her carriage. The
ride begins with their sighting of the School, where Children strove At Recess which
represents ones youth and childhood. Next, death, immortality and Emily pass a field of gazing
grain which represents maturity and adult hood; we can assume this is the case because the
grain is personified to be gazing at them, which tells readers the grain is tall, ripe and ready for
harvest. Lastly the trio passes by the setting sun; the sun setting represents the end of a chapter,
the end of a day or season. We know the sun setting symbolizes the end of rather the old age
because in the next stanza Ms. Dickson tells us The Dews drew quivering and Chill For only
Gossamer, my Gown. The main character is unprepared for death, for though she is on this
carriage ride with her suitor yet is wearing only a sleeping gown. It is safe to say her date with
was an unexpected one.
Death personified as a fianc is not unintentional literary device for Emily Dickson. We
know that in her own personal life Ms. Dickson was never married. As readers we also know the
poem was written and published in the late 1800s. Because as readers we know the 1800s was a
time where patriarchy was the dominant ideology Because I could not stop for death can be
read in two ways. The poem can be read on a more surface level in which Emily Dickson uses a
carriage ride with death to explain how she has accepted a long term sickness that eventually
takes a her life; but similarly marriage can be looked at through that same lens when examined
under the eyes of a woman living in a society controlled by gender roles and patriarchy. We can
infer Ms. Dickson can be referring to both sickness and marriage because she describes the pace

of the death driven carriage as no haste. The occurrence of death in the case of a sickness can
be said to be a long and rather dragged out process. Marriage, which is a union that is meant to
be forever, is also a long and lengthy process. I can even go as far as claiming possibly Ms.
Dickson is describing marriage as a type of sickness.
A home is understood to be a dwelling place for a family; it is where both the husband
and wife live all their days. In Because I could not stop for death, Emilys final destination
with her deadly fianc is a burial site, which is also her home. Emily describes her abode place as
A Swelling of the Ground The Roof was scarcely visible The Cornice in the Ground.
Literally speaking, Emily Dickson cannot live inside a grave, but instead the grave is used a
metaphor for her home with her fianc. Her home is symbolized by an area where there is no
life, a location where dreams, and hopes and laughs and smiles go to exist no more. To compare
ones home with a lover to a grave is to say that ones lover has killed their true self. This claim
can be further backed up with Emilys satirical line in which Emily said she put away my labor
and my leisure too, For His Civility. We know this line is satirical because no woman or man
wants to give up their leisure. In fact, we can infer that if it were truly not an issue for her to give
up her leisure, she would not have mentioned it. To give up her leisure means to give up
everything Emily once loved to do, everything that once made her happy, she has to now give up
her fianc, death.
Whether marriage is a type sickness or Emily Dickson is accepting the fate of death in
her life Because I could not stop for death tells a story of a woman who goes on a carriage ride
through her suitor death, leading her to a life of eternity.

Olukemi Akinde
From 1910 to about 1960 America witnessed the greatest migration to ever occur on its
soil. Six million African Americans journeyed from the rural South to the urban cities of the
North. Many factors were at hand in pushing a great wave of people to leave their homes and
venture into a land of uncertainty. Forty five years had passed since the 13th amendment was
added to the constitution. African Americans, though now constitutionally free from slavery,
were still being taken advantage of by white land owners who still needed laborers to work their
land; they accomplished this goal through the use of sharecropping. The line between slavery and
sharecropping was a thin one. African Americans were promised rights, but were never given
them. In order to maintain the status quo and keep African Americans with as little power and
rights as possible, the Jim Crow laws were created. These laws made segregation legal and made
it permissible for African Americans to be treated as second class citizens. In order to keep
power in the hands of White southerners fear was instilled in the hearts of African Americans.
Houses were burned; African Americans were jailed for minuscule crimes and were publically
lynched. These and more are some of the factors that pushed African Americans North. The
North, often painted as the promise land in letters from relatives or Black newspapers,
unbeknownst to African American Southerners, was only a more polished and refined version of
the South. It was this hope and belief that freedom would be found in the North that ignited the
fire of what is now known as the Red Summer.
In a YouTube documentary entitled The Great Migration Merlin Lindsey, in plain
words described the difference between the North and South in one simple sentence in the

South they told you what it was, in the North nobody told you. When one is not directly
informed what the consequences of their actions will be, they learn from experience. In the case
of Eugene Williams, there was no time left to learn from experience, one ignorant mistake lead to
his death. While swimming in a lake Eugene Williams swam past an invisible line separating the
White part of a Chicago street from the Black side of the street. Little White boys saw this and
began stoning Williams till he died. Williams death caused uproar after police officers refused to
arrest the white boy that had stoned Williams to death. This event was the spark that lite the fire
of violence that summer. After police officers refused to arrest the white boys the scene quickly
grew with African Americans who were ready to take justice into their own hands.
The same individuals that had fled the South due to the violence and lynching aimed at
African Americans were now fighting back against racial injustice in the North! The new
migrants had learned their new surroundings well. It had been a few years since they arrived in
their promise land and they realized though racism existed it was not by any means legal. It was
this undergrounded and more hidden racism that gave African Americans the confidence to fight
back. They had not seen the lynching they were used to and they did not deal with harsh
landowners who over worked them and mistreated, instead they dealt with silent and inward
segregation. African Americans, for the sake of their long travel up North, for the sake of
believing the racial justice they sought would be found outside of the South believed the facade
of equality put on by the North. It was this belief that the North was in fact the promise land; the
belief that the North did in fact have a better quality of life where racism did not exist that fueled
the fire in African American hearts to fight back.
The first riot took place in the south side Chicago. By the end of the summer riots had
broken out all over the North, West and South. The three most violent riots took place in

Chicago, Washington D.C and Arkansas. The spread of violence can be summed in the words of
Martin Luther King in justice anywhere, is a threat to injustice everywhere. Both African
Americans and White Americans had much at stake. One journalist in the New York Times wrote
There had been no trouble with the Negro before the war when most admitted the superiority of
the white race. This question leads one to ask no trouble for whom? If African Americans
fought back with the power they suppressed for 245 years, they would eventually lose respect for
White Americans and their laws, the idea of such threatening the power White Americans held
dear. The outbreak of riots can be compared to the French revolutions and its impact on other
world revolutions that then sparked the desire for freedom in other colonized parts of the world
in how it encouraged and gave other oppressed Africans in other states the heart to fight back.
The riot in Chicago was dreadful, but one of the deadliest riots occurred in Washington
D.C. soon after. The riot lasted four long days. Rumors of a black boy who had been accused of
sexual assault of a white man, was now being released from jail. The rumor spread and angered
many white sailors, soldiers and marines. The white men took to the streets that were
predominately occupied by African Americans with pipes, huge pieces of lumber and other blunt
objects. The White Americas brutally beat any African American person in sight. There was no
police intervention. After two days of being victimized the spirit of fighting back that shaken up
the status quo in Chicago was now showing its self real in Washington D.C. African Americans
began to fight back with their own weapons. Again, there was no police intervention. Four days
had passed with no police intervention; finally it was a heavy rain that ended the riot. In the end,
several men were killed from gunshot wounds; nine were killed in severe street fights; and an
estimated thirty or more ultimately died from wounds. Over one hundred and fifty men, women,
and children were beaten, clubbed, and shot by both African American and white rioters. Six

Policemen and several Marine guards were shot during these riots. The casualties were
tremendous.
The Red Summer was a season filled with gun shots, blood, injuries, death and resilience.
White Americans feared losing their superiority and African Americans gained a boost of
confidence that lead them to fight and protect themselves. A Southern black woman wrote a letter
to THE CRISIS; a publication sponsored by the NAACP and edited by W. E.B. Du Bois,
admiring African Americans for fighting back, she wrote, "The Washington riot gave me a thrill
that comes once in a life time ... at last our men had stood up like men. ... I stood up alone in my
room ... and exclaimed aloud, 'Oh I thank God, thank God.' The pent up horror, grief and
humiliation of a life time -- half a century -- was being stripped from me." It was as though a
new wave of consciousness spread in the hearts of Africa Americans.

For some the plays The Weir by Conor McPherson and By The Bog of Cats by
Marina Carr will be read as fictional works of literature, but for others like me, these plays can
read as real and possible occurrences. In both plays there is a heavy influence of spirituality.
Spirituality is something that I have accepted as true for two reasons. The first reason being I am
Christian and Christians believe that almost everything in this life has a spiritual root or cause to
it. For example if one is not reaching a certain financial stability in their life, Christians believe
there might be a spiritual blockage causing the financial instability. The second reason I connect
with the idea of spirituality is because I am Nigerian. If one were to watch a Nigerian movie
whether about education, love, war or anything AT ALL juju (witchcraft) will somehow play a
role. Both plays intertwine reality and mysticism seamlessly. In The Bogs of the Cats a women
by the name is Hester is destined to die. The main character is representative of how
multidimensional woman can be. Often times women are painted as sort of flat characters.
Either women are painted as solely domestic beings, or they are desperately attached to a man, or
they are portrayed as deceptive beings. In The Bog of Cats Hester is obviously inhumane this
shown through her murder of her brother and her destruction of the bog. But she is also hurt,
savages feel no emotion but Hester is feeling abandoned by her mother and husband is obviously
an emotional mess. This story puts in the forefront of readers mind that women are not witches to
be witches but are created to be such by the oppression they face. Hester is oppressed by men all
around her, her ex-husband, the leadership of men in the church and not to mention we do not
even know what happened to her father. But based on the fact that her husband left her for a
younger woman we know emotionally devastating and heartbreaking acts men are capable of
doing. Ultimately there are two major themes that are playing into one another, the multidimensions of woman and the outer realm. The Weir similarly deals with these same issues of

womanhood in relation to the man and to the unseen world. Valarie, after opening up and
bonding with the men is in a sense equal to them for she shares the same ghostly and emotional
turmoil as the men do. Initially they believe she is too weak to hear the stories they tell, but once
she tells her own they recognize her as one of them.

Reflection: These reflections are formal responses or analysis of different genres of

literature and different times in America. The last piece discusses two Irish plays, the other
pieces discuses poems. One poem is by an African American man nearing the civil rights
movements and the other poem a woman during the 19th century. These texts show a range in
literature, time and genre.