A Dream Deferred :: essays research papers

What happens to a dream deferred?Does it dry up handle a raisin in the solarize?Or fester like a sore-And then run?Does it stench like rotten meat?Or crust and sugar over- like a syrupy sweet?Maybe it just sagslike a dull load.Or does it explode?While Langhston Hughes authors this poem, A Dream Deferred, it can easily be interpreted as Toni Morrisons description of Nel and her vitality of sorrow and dissatisfaction. Sula and Nel, the protagonists in Toni Morrisons Sula, are individually the unaccompanied daughters of mothers whose distance leaves the young girls with dreams to erase this solitude and loneliness. There is no question that Sula alleviates this aloneness with a unintellectual and experimental life, "Im going down like one of those redwoods. I accepted did live in this world"(143). Nel, however, for the most part, fails terribly at realizing her dreams and experiencing a happy existence. Compromising her individuality, her emotional stability, and her dre ams mark Nels banal and unfulfilling life.Early in Nels life during a trip to New Orleans, she watches as her mother is humiliated by a trains white, racist conductor she watches the indignity of her mothers having to squat in an open line of merchandise to urinate while white train passengers gaze and she watches her mothers shame at her own Creole mothers libidinous lifestyle. Her mothers submissiveness and humiliation evokes a fear, an anger, and an energy in Nel. Her emotions intensify as she makes a declaration to neer be her mother, to never compromise her individuality, "Im me. Im not their daughter. Im not Nel. Im me. Me"(28). Figuring that her "me-ness" will take her far, she exclaims "I want...I want to be... wonderful"(29). However, that trip to Louisiana "was the last as salubrious as the first time she was ever to leave Medallion"(29).Initially, Nels self-declaration empowers her to ensue that dream of independence. She gathers power and joy, and "the strength to cultivate a friend in spite of mother"(29). Nel achieves a degree of her self-described "me-ness," her dream, a separation from her subservient and disgraceful mother, resulting in a new found complacency, "Nel, who regarded the oppressive neatness of her home with dread, felt comfortable in it with Sula"(29). This happiness was enclose in both girls, "Their meeting was fortunate for it let them use each other to grow on"(49). Unfortunately, as she left Medallion only one time, Nel would discover and enjoy this "me-ness" only one time.