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Gwendolyn Brooks has a very complex view on the American Dream. In an interview, Brooks said that the purpose of her poetry was to "feature people and their concerns--their troubles as well as their joys.", and she delivers on this premise through crushing reality and brutal honesty. By offering a lens into the lives of others, she has the opportunity to not only shine light onto the injustice that various marginalized groups must experience but provide these people with unique solutions on how to navigate the difficulties they might face. By definition, Brooks does not believe in the American Dream, but she still optimistically pushes to achieve this lofty ideal.

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The Life of Lincoln West is an extremely saddening poem about the life of a young boy shunned by the system he is born into. From the day he is born, he is shunned for being ugly. It is not confirmed until later in the poem whether this "ugliness" is related to race or not, during a confrontation with multiple racist men on the street when he is only seven years of age. Throughout the entirety of the poem, Lincoln West is harassed and attacked for aspects of his life that are completely out of his control. By the end of the poem, all Lincoln can do to keep himself happy is flip the meaning of one of the racial insults flung at him, in a painfully naive show of optimism. Gwendolyn Brooks goes to great lengths to describe how nice of a person Lincoln West is to really accentuate how unfair the young boy's treatment is.

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Speech To The Young: Speech To The Progress-Toward

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Speech To The Young: Speech To The Progress-Toward

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This speech is unique in its use of optimism grounded in reality. The message here is about moving forward, all while doing your best to ignore the negative voices in your life. There is an emphasis on living in the present over finding yourself dwelling on the past or stressing about the future. Unfortunately, to even address this idea, Gwendolyn Brooks cannot ignore the obstacles holding people back from living a peaceful and mindful life. She repeats the same format for four lines in a row to describe the types of people that will try to bring you down. Arguably the most important line of this poem is "Even if you are not ready for the day, it cannot always be night.", a line of hope and optimism that is not afraid to address how undesirable things are in the present.

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Upon being asked how living in 1960s Chicago affected her experience as a writer, Gwendolyn Brooks talks about how she was fortunate enough to be able to drown out the negativity and prejudice with her art. She was aware of how the rest of the world saw her, but she used poetry as a form of escapism. That being said, she goes on to talk about her respect for all the black people who fought for equality and are still fighting for equality to this day. Midway through the interview, Gwendolyn Brooks quotes fellow poet Karl Shapiro, saying “One of the rules of the poetic establishment is that Negroes are not admitted to the polite company of the anthology. Poetry as we know it remains the most lily-white of the arts.”.

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The Last Quatrain Of The Ballad Of Emmett Till

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The Last Quatrain Of The Ballad Of Emmett Till

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When Gwendolyn Brooks wrote this poem, The Ballad of Emmett Till was a preexisting song created by Bob Dylan. The Last Quatrain of The Ballad of Emmett Till is an example of a "golden shovel", meaning it is a poem that is meant to take a piece of art and expand on it. The original song by Bob Dylan is about Emmett Till, a black man who was lynched after someone mistook a conversation between him and a white woman as flirting. The Last Quatrain of The Ballad of Emmett Till provides the audience with the heart-wrenching concept of Emmett's mother attending her son's funeral. Brooks widens our perspective on the tragedy of death by exposing us to the grief that is experienced by loved ones. The poem is short yet relentlessly depressing, not missing a single opportunity to express the permanent hole left in the hearts of Emmett's family.

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Gwendolyn Brooks, unlike other poets who tackled social issues in their poems, never actually gives her opinion on the American Dream. That being said, it is not too outlandish to draw a conclusion through her wording and the topics she chooses to cover. Even in her positive pieces meant to inspire hope, the looming concept of oppression is omnipresent. Gwendolyn Brooks the idea of equal opportunity for all, but she is in no way afraid to point out how far we are from that goal as a society.

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- Brooks, Gwendolyn Elizabeth. “The Life of Lincoln West” Blacks, Third World Press, Chicago, Illinois, 1973.

- Brooks, Gwendolyn Elizabeth. “Speech to the Young: Speech to the Progress-Toward” Blacks, Third World Press, Chicago, Illinois, 1973.

- Angle, Paul M. “We Asked Gwendolyn Brooks about the Creative Environment in Illinois.” Poets.org, Academy of American Poets, 17 Apr. 2017, https://poets.org/text/we-asked-gwendolyn-brooks-about-creative-environment-illinois.

- Brooks, Gwendolyn Elizabeth. “The Last Quatrain Of The Ballad Of Emmett Till” Blacks, Harper, New York, New York, 1960.