In the turn-of-the-century America in which Thomas Wolfe grew up, citizens became more and more attracted to and convinced of the (so-called) American Dream, thanks in part to the successes of Andrew Carnegie and John D. Rockefeller who acquired great wealth from humble beginnings. Popularized in the nineteenth-century novels of Horatio Alger Jr., the rags-to-riches phenomenon became ingrained in the minds of many Americans who believed that, through hard work and determination, they could achieve prosperity. Born just two years after Wolfe, Langston Hughes recognized not only this promise of a dream but also its relative inaccessibility to his peers, primarily because of race. Hughes was a key figure in the Harlem Renaissance, gaining acclamation for black art in the 1920s; however, as time went on, he noticed how little had changed for the African Americans' overall situation in the country. In 1951 Hughes published the poem "Harlem" (also known as "A Dream Deferred") in Montage of a Dream Deferred and made famous his comment that postponed and unrealized dreams lead to pain and devastation: Wolfe's first novel, Look Homeward, Angel, recounts another version of Hughes's Dream Deferred. The Gant family's tale takes place long before 1951, and Altamont is a long trip from Harlem, but Wolfe captures the essence of Hughes's poem through the fictional version of his family and their failed dreams.
