Hope, Dreams, and Pride

(Walter’s point of view)

                As my father says, “Seem like God didn’t see fit to give the black man nothing but dreams – but He did give us children to make them dreams seem worth while” (Hansberry 46).  A man can swallow his pride – but he don’t got no right to swallow someone else’s.  Today, I was ’bout ready to swallow mine, though it was gonna darn near kill me, ’cause we needed that money, man, we needed it bad.  But Travis … he’s my boy.  And I just couldn’t take from him that feeling that we are equal people, and have got the right to walk the earth just as much as any white man does.  Me and my family – we’re simple people.  And my wife, Ruth, is gonna bring us another baby.  Who am I to tell that baby he or she don’t count as much as the white folks do?  Who am I, man, Who – am – I?  I got me some dreams.  I’m gonna make a great life for my family yet.  My last dream done “Dr[ied] up like a raisin in the sun,” (Hughes) but I’ve learned my lesson.  A man don’t need no millions of dollars to be happy.  I’ve got a dream where all men, woman, and children, black and white, can respect each other as equals.  I’ve got a dream of a world where no man has to be any other man’s servant, just his own.  I’ve got a dream where a man can earn his place, “brick by brick” (Hansberry 148).  I’ve got a dream that my sister is going to be a doctor, that our Mother is going to retire in peace, that my wife will be a lovely mother of two beautiful children.  A man can get down on his luck, down on himself.  He can think about giving up his dreams.  But, for the sake of his family, not just those who are family by blood but family by brotherhood, he’s got to pick himself up and keep dreaming.  I’ve got myself a dream – and it’s going to “explode” (Hughes).

 

"Montage of a Dream Deferred"

 

What happens to a dream deferred?

 

Does it dry up / Like a raisin in the sun?

Or fester like a sore - /And then run?

 

Does it stink like rotten meat?

 

Or crust and sugar over - /Like a syrupy sweet? 

Maybe it just sags / Like a heavy load. 

Or does it explode? 

- Langston Hughes

Puzzle Paragraph 1 I did it in three sentences - can I get bonus points? :)

Today, everyone hears about celebrities with more money than they could ever need going crazy; no one would be overly surprised if a billionaire decided to search the Savannah for pink elephants or imagined he or she was the modern-day Moses.  When Fitzgerald writes of the ridiculously rich in his story “The Diamond as Big as the Ritz,” it isn’t just another story meant to teach a lesson with talking animals and the classic “Once upon a time…” beginning traditionally vital for a story to teach morals.  Fitzgerald uses a different approach: extreme exaggeration of what occurs in our time, his famous rhetoric making the impossible seem possible and the reality of greed and materialism terrifying enough to make anyone feel "a little tired of diamonds"  (Fitzgerald XI).