Dreams

Dreams - meaning Summary

Hope as Survival

This short poem urges readers to cling to dreams because they sustain life and purpose. Using two parallel stanzas, it contrasts a living world with one robbed of aspiration: without dreams life is like a wounded bird or a barren, frozen field. The message is a compact moral: dreams are necessary for vitality and hope, especially resonant given Hughes’s focus on African American resilience and future possibility.