PART A--Which of the following best describes a central idea of the passage? what makes people do bad things?

the answer is c. it calls attention to the urgency of the message

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.

is the answer