What is the main idea of: I sit at my desk listening to thunder growl outside my window. Flashes of light burst through the darkness, and wind races past my window. The thrilling combination of sight and sound conjures up visions of dragons roaring proudly, breathing fire, and soaring across the midnight sky. Dragons first fascinated me when I was a little girl. They have followed me ever since. The magnificent creatures appeared in storybooks I read in the library, paintings I saw in museums, movies I watched in the theater, and the dreams I had in my sleep. By the time I was thirteen, one question consumed me. Determined to discover if dragons could have actually existed, I set out on a quest for facts.

The harlem renaissance dawned in an era of pervasive racism and segregation. although legally "free," many african americans were still bound by ideas that had their roots in the slavery of earlier centuries. identity and freedom are important ideas presented in many of the poems from the harlem renaissance. furthermore, the values of identity and freedom are not unique to particular times and places. as hughes expresses in "dream variations," all humans want to be able to develop their identities in freedom. what role does freedom play in the poems you read in this unit? what is required of a society to enable each individual to be true to his or her identity and be free to live by that identity? write about at least three of the poems, describing how the poet uses imagery to depict freedom and identity, the lack of it, or the desire for it.