18 pages • 36 minutes read
Langston HughesA modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
The central theme of maintaining hope appears in the plea, “Hold fast to dreams” (Lines 1, 5). As dreams symbolize hope, people must keep them. The repeated statement is the only positive part of the poem—it involves preserving aspirations. The other six lines are negative: They detail the cruel consequences of not having aspirations—of losing dreams, thus losing hope.
The speaker highlights the urgency of maintaining hope not by showing the reader what happens when hope stays and flourishes (positive) but by illustrating what occurs when a person does not have hope in their life (negative). It’s as if the speaker wants to scare the reader into making an extra effort to save their dreams. If the reader doesn’t hang on to their dreams, their life will be despondent—it will turn into a negative, unhappy image: Either a wounded bird that can’t fly or a frozen field that can’t grow anything. A life without hope is immobile, so the poem illustrates being similarly trapped in a gloomy situation.
The repeated line that starts Stanza 1 and Stanza 2 creates a bold image. The exhortation to hold on to dreams turns dreams into a tangible item, precious and valuable. Dreams represent hope, and hope has extraordinary value—thus, a person must hold it tight and keep it close as if it were a newborn child or an irreplaceable heirloom.
By Langston Hughes
Children’s Rhymes
Langston Hughes
Cora Unashamed
Langston Hughes
Harlem
Langston Hughes
I look at the world
Langston Hughes
I, Too
Langston Hughes
Let America Be America Again
Langston Hughes
Me and the Mule
Langston Hughes
Mother to Son
Langston Hughes
Mulatto
Langston Hughes
Mule Bone: A Comedy of Negro Life
Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston
Not Without Laughter
Langston Hughes
Slave on the Block
Langston Hughes
Thank You, M'am
Langston Hughes
The Big Sea
Langston Hughes
Theme for English B
Langston Hughes
The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain
Langston Hughes
The Negro Speaks of Rivers
Langston Hughes
The Ways of White Folks
Langston Hughes
The Weary Blues
Langston Hughes
Tired
Langston Hughes