Take Home Mid-term Exam - Essay Example

Hughes asks questions. The one of the question is "What happens to a dream deferred?"(Hughes). He wants to know the probable state of those whose dream does not come true. The symbol the author uses for this particular question is raisin. Raisin is a dry grape, thus the author asks about the dream: "Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun?" The dream is like grapes, it may lose its importance if does not come true for too long time. The question asked by Hughes had a follow-up in the works of other poets and writers.

In “The Library card” by Richard Wright we see how a dream of a person is recovering. Wright decided to find out who H.L. Mencken was and why he was criticized with such a cruelty. Being black, he could not enter the library because of the color of his skin, thus he decided to borrow a library card from a white man. In the library, reading literature by Mencken, he understood why he was despised: his texts were too bold: “this man was fighting, fighting with words. He was using words as a weapon, using them as one would use a club” (Wright 11).

The library opened a new world for a black man, he read about things he even did not imagine to exist: “the impulse to dream had been slowly beaten out of me by experience. Now it surged up again and I hungered for books, new ways of looking and seeing” (Wright 12). Here we see that people can have the same dream, but the future and the fortune of this particular dream can be different. Wright managed to surge his dream up in contrast to the teenagers from the poem by Gwendolyn Brooks “We Real Cool".

These teenagers, they are probably black, left school and decided to play instead. They understand well that they would die soon if continue to miss classes, that the road they choose is bad. However, they seem to agree with such a fortune as in the poem we can feel that these teenagers are completely disappointed and have no dreams at all. There are also people who treat this world as it is. Such an inspiring motive can be traced in the writing of Jack Kerouac. His poem American Haiku is light and inspiring, he is writing about different people: rich and poor, white and black to reflect his experience and to share it with other people.

Question 2. The American Dream American people have invented a concept of American Dream. The essence of it has changed over time but in general it means that Americans wanted to be always happy, financially comfortable and free. Now the American people have to recognize that this dream can’t ever come true. In the modern society people try to survive and to bring up their children. There was a period when an American Dream seemed actual as the development of the American economy allowed to admit that Americans would really live in prosperity and happiness.

However, now American families do their best to make their ends meet. The main trouble is that Americans have to pay huge bills and their annual income can’t allow paying on time. Thus many families appear in debts and the financial security the Americans were sure of a decade ago became a myth. Bringing up children turned into a big problem. Luckily, public schools are free, but children also need clothes and food and while parents try to pay bills, their children wear inexpensive clothes and remain hungry.

As an American dream played an important role, it was