There are numerous factors that could prevent someone from achieving their dreams. Many people are the product of the environment or society of which they live in. In the nineteen forties and going into the early nineteen fifties, the rumblings of a storm was rapidly approaching. Black people in America were tired of the social injustice and cruelty they endured just because of the color of their skin. Many Black Americans wanted to rise up from the situations that they were forced into, but couldn’t due to segregation laws, poorly equipped schools, and menial jobs. Gwendolyn Brooks and Langston Hughes both wrote poems that dealt with how the Black American’s treatment in America affected their dreams. Brooks’ “kitchenette building” and Hughes “Harlem” both express how Black peoples dreams can be stifled. While both poems share the notion of dreams being affected by circumstances, they differ in that “kitchenette building” narrows down why dreams cannot be attained because of the setting, while “Harlem” is broader and deals strictly with the concept of a dream. The similarities and the differences between the two are shown through the speaker, the work of the poems, and the organization.
In “kitchenette building”, the speaker thoroughly describes how the setting affects the concept of following ones dream. The speaker is obviously someone who lives in the building. This is evident because of the use of “we” in three of the four stanzas. The story that the speaker is conveying is that the living conditions of this small, cramped, tenement building that the occupants live in are nowhere near adequate to allow a dream to grow or blossom. The speaker says that a “Dream makes a giddy sound, not strong/ Like “rent,” “feeding a wife,” “satisfying a man.” (Lines 2-3) demonstrating that the occupant’s life is completely different than that of dream. The occupants have to concentrate more on the needs of life than of the wants. The speaker appears to have the voice of a...