A Raisin In The Sun Analysis

What is the meaning of money for you? For some people money means the world to them and even where the only place they can find happiness. However, for others money doesn’t mean anything to them; those people can live just with what they have and still be happy. According to “A Raisin in the Sun” written by Lorraine Hansberry demonstrates some of the conflicts people of color had in the late 1950’s when the subject involved money. Walter, one of the main characters of the play and also the only grown man of the family had the most problems with money, but at the same time he just wanted the best for his family. Beneatha, Walter’s sister, wanted to prove that a black woman could be a doctor not just a nurse to the racist society they were living in. Mama, the mother of Walter and Beneatha. Always trying to do the right thing for her family. All Mama wanted was a successfully family in a perfect house.

“Money is not the key to happiness,” no big pay amount would make much of a difference. As people in America everybody thinks you cannot afford to avoid the unhappiness of having to  life,  having plenty of cash does not make your any more enjoyable then what it is in the present. Happiness depends on how you feel towards your loved ones which in Lorraine Hansberry's Play, “A Raisin In the Sun” Walter's obsession with money often caused him to act unkindly to his loved ones. In the book Raisin in the Sun a family from the Southside of Chicago they lived in a small apartment trying to find a way out of the community they have lived in. The Younger family was dealing with living in a white dominant society dealing with poverty and prejudice acts. The Youngers’ try to ignore the obstacles and stay on their feet throughout the 1950s.

The events of A Raisin in the Sun revolve around the main theme of dreams and manhood. In the story, the Younger family has always had big dreams, but due to racism and prejudice, they unceasingly watch their dreams deferred. Walter’s dream throughout the play is to provide for his family by becoming a businessman, but his dreams are postponed after he must work full-time at a menial, trifling, and meaningless job as a chauffeur. When Mama gives him the remaining sixty-five thousand dollars of the life insurance check, he believes that he can finally achieve his dream, only to loose the money and have his dreams deferred once more. The title “A raisin in the sun” is also a reference to dreams, from the poem “Harlem”. In the poem, “a raisin in the sun “is a metaphor for deferred dreams. When a grape is baked in the sun, it shrinks, and withers, but does not disappear. Similarly, members of the Younger family have dreams, but the dreams wither and are deferred due to their financial struggles. Even though the dreams wither, they do not disappear, and they renew their dreams after they receive the life insurance check. Mama’s old plant is a symbol of her perseverance for her long-time dream of having her own house in spite of austere circumstances. The plant struggles to grow by the apartment kitchen window with its lack of light and resources, but Mama keeps it alive regardless. Similarly, her family does not have adequate recourses (they don’t have a house nor enough money). When her dream of moving the to house seems to be delayed, she goes to the window and looks at her plant before declaring, “Well—ain’t it a mess in here, though? […] All this unpacking and everything we got to do.” It is significant how she looks at her plant when her dream seems to be deferred again, since it means that she is looks at the plant for hope. At the very end of the play, Mama returns to the apartment to move her potted plant to a garden in the new house, symbolizing that she finally achieved her dream of raising her family in a true house.

Demi Lovato Once said, “No matter what you're going through, there's a light at the end of the tunnel and it may seem hard to get to it, but you can do it and just keep working towards it and you'll find the positive side of things.” A play, A Raisin in the Sun, was written in 1959 by Lorraine Hansberry. The play is about the Younger family who wants to move out of their neighborhood for a new beginning. Among each Younger, they each face a conflict that is related to money.Lorraine Hansberry reveals her idea through the character Beneatha.

Lorraine Hansberry was a young African- American playwright, activist and writer. She was born in Chicago, IL during the 1930’s. Hansberry’s father was a successful real estate broker and her mother was a school age teacher. Both of her parents were wealthy successful members of the NAACP and Urban League and contribute large amount of money to help the associations fight for the equality of African American families during the civil rights movement. Both parents were well respected and known by their peers. Lorraine Hansberry was able to attend college and discover a career as a writer. One of her most famous piece of work and till this day still is, is the playwright A Raising in the Sun which it’s title is a reference to the famous poem of Langston Hughes’s poem “Harlem” also known as “A Dreamed Deferred”. “What happens to a dream deferred? Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun? Or fester like a sore- and the run? Does it stink like rotten meat? Or crust and sugar over- like a syrupy sweet? Maybe it just sags like a heavy load. Or does it explode?” (Hughes 1951). The playwright A Raisin in the Sun focuses on the different dreams and aspirations of the Younger’s family members. Living in a restricted society during the 1950’s in Southside Chicago was not every families dream. Through each character in the play we see the hunger and hope for a better future where they each could have something to live for. In Lorraine Hansberry’s play “A Raisin in the Sun” she uses the

In Lorraine Hansberry’s a Raisin In the Sun the character Ruth is talking about getting rid of her child and mama wants Walter to be like his father and tell her not to but he can’t bring himself to do it. In act one scene three there is a lot of tension and fighting so hansberry wants to break the tension with some humor. One example of humor is when beneatha comes out of her room in a Nigerian dress singing songs and confusing Mama (76). Another example of how there is humor after beneath a comes out with her dress Walter also comes in the scene drunk and dancing and chanting with beneatha (77-79). Hansberry made things calmer and broke the tension because a book or play is not good if it is serious scene after serious scene they have to have humor in their book or play.

During the 1950’s there was a lot of “equality” problems and people related to the movie and the book which made it so popular. The play is about people who struggle being an african american family in a community where they do not belong, struggling with money, and deferred dreams. Lorraine is a african american herself and feels like she is being treated wrongly so she approaches it. “Negroes have tried every method of communication, of transformation of their situation from petition to the vote, everything. We’ve tried it all.

("Bob Riley Quotes." BrainyQuote.com). In A Raisin in the Sun, a play by Lorraine Hansberry, the Younger family is going through a trying time of their own. While the play conveyed this heart-wrenching story to the masses when it first came out, it has reached an even wider audience in it’s time off the stage. While the movie A Raisin in the Sun, directed by Kenny Leon, uses the play as the primary basis

A Raisin in the Sun is a play written in 1950 by Lorraine Hansberry, an African American writer. The main characters are the Younger family; Mama, her son Walter Lee, her daughter Beneatha, Walter Lee’s son Travis, and Walter Lee’s wife Ruth. The play dramatizes a conflict between the main characters’ dreams and their struggles in poverty. The characters’ lives as a low income working black family contribute to their connection with poverty. One’s work identifies who you are in society.

Throughout “A Raisin in the Sun” by Lorraine Hansberry, the author describes the struggle of an African-American family by the name of the Youngers, to work together so that every member of the family has a better future. While there are many characters that affect the plot line of the play. Two major characters, Walter Lee Younger and Lena Younger (Mama), influence the plot of “A Raisin in the Sun” to the highest degree.

In the play A Raisin in the Sun, author Lorraine Hansberry uses each character she introduces to advance the destruction of patriarchal view so widely accepted by the world. Hansberry writes A Raisin in the Sun through her own experience of living in the 1950’s in the South Side of Chicago where the play takes place. At this time, blacks and whites lived “separate but equal” which justified the treatment blacks received from whites. Women working in the house and men getting jobs to provide for their families was still a widely upheld concept as well. Hansberry takes these concepts and challenges them through A Raisin in the Sun with each character in different ways.

Imagine, for a moment, that someone has just received an enormous check. However, this positive and seemingly heaven-sent bestowal is laced with dismay and mayhem, for there are numerous outcomes this check could produce--not all of which are accomplishable. Meanwhile, said person’s family is being torn asunder by all of these possible outcomes since each is persistently continuing to pester and demand the person who received the check to use it in the way that each of the family members personally believe. It is always a burdensome choice, whether to consider an individual, the majority, or the minorities, yet this is the dilemma thrust upon one woman in Raisin in the Sun by Lorraine Hansberry. In writing this impossible circumstance

During the story, “A Raisin in The Sun”, holds two influences, Walter, and Mama, who have the most significant impact among the plot. Here’s why; Lorraine Hansberry has created this play to prove what life was like before our modern generation had come about. As to why Lorraine brought Walter and Mama to help make up the conflicts and rising action to the plot. If the play was created without Walter, it would only be a story based upon, Beneatha, and Mama. There’d be no Ruth, no Travis, or new baby soon to come about. Whereas, if there was no Mama around anymore, the family would have no intelligence, faith, or leader, to help the children determine how to handle their problems or know what to do with themselves.

The play was written in 1944, the end of the second world war, and set in a southern middle class in American great depression in the 1930s. People benefited material prosperity from capitalist economy suddenly suffered the spiritual emptiness and shake of faith during the great depression while poverty ravaged the bond of family

A Raisin in the Sun written by Lorraine Hansberry tells the story of a lower-class African American family’s struggle to gain middle-class acceptance when Mama, the sixty-year old mother, receives a $10,000 insurance check from the death of her husband. The drama primarily focuses on how the ten thousand dollars should be spent. Walter Lee Younger, the son, so desperate to better provide for his family, wants to invest all the money into a liquor store with two of his friends. Mama objects and instead decides to use part of the check as a down payment on a house in a white neighborhood. Conflicts with Walter escalate. In an attempt to resolve things with her son, Mama entrusts Walter with the rest of the money. He immediately invests it, without the consent of Mama, in his liquor store idea, with the belief he will quadruple his investment. However, one of Walter's business partners runs off with the money. In spite the loss and being warned by white neighbors that blacks are not welcomed, the Youngers continue with their plans to move.