"successful failure." and "success is counted sweetest" identify a universal theme for each of the poems. then, compare and contrast the two poems for their content and their themes.

the major theme of langston hughes’s montages of a dream deferred is the deferred, or delayed, american dream of african americans. the poem is about how african americans failed to achieve their goals in time:

this year, maybe, do you think i can graduate?

i’m already two years late.dropped out six months when i was seven,

a year when i was eleven,

then got put back when we come north.

to get through high high school at twenty's kind of late–

but maybe this year i can graduate.

the poem also depicts how african americans had to keep postponing their needs with a hope that someday they would be able to obtain what they desired:

maybe now i can have that white enamel stove

i dreamed about when we first fell in love

eighteen years ago.

but you know,

rooming and everything

then kids,

cold-water flat and all that.

but now my daughter’s married

and my boy's most grown–

quit school to work

and where we're moving

there ain't no stove–

maybe i can buy that white enamel stove!

however, despite their deferred dreams, the poem shows the refusal of african americans to give up easily and let go of their dreams of a better life. their dreams may have been delayed, but they did not lose hope.

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