to think that John Redding Goes to Sea is one of the lesser liked stories from hurston. it's langston hughes harlem's older goth sister, that offers one somber ending to hughes' question. what happens to a dream deferred? it lies inert like trapped fireflies. catches like old twigs on water, desperate to go like little wooden ships to sea, struck tangled in the weeds. zora's story holds so much of her own ambitions within it, of her earliest fears that truly resonate with me even if it's too simplistic, "less humorous" than the rest of her work as people have said. it's succinct enough that it reads like a fable, easily transferable and resonant with our own lives. what happens to a dream deferred? well, it eventually dies.