A Raisin In The Sun By Lorraine Hansberry: An Analysis

Dreams don’t always work out the way you want them to. Beneatha, in A Raisin in the Sun, had many big dreams, not all easily achievable. Many of them, also never came true for her, and then some of them did. Beneatha’s character traits explain dreams, and how sometimes they don't come true. Beneatha's independence, indecisiveness, and modern views of society all help describe what Lorraine Hansberry is trying to make readers think about while reading A Raisin in the Sun.

Exposition The characters are introduced by Hansberry. It is the 1950’s in a tiny apartment in Southside Chicago. The Younger family has just suffered the loss of Walter’s dad, with a $10,000 inheritance check supposedly to arrive in the near future. Upon hearing about the check, Walter, the protagonist, hopes to be able to take the money to invest in a liquor store. His sister, Beneatha hopes to be able to use it to attend medical school and Mama

I chose to review “Unit Four: Freedom, Black Soldiers, and the Union Military”. This unit focuses on the slave’s involvement in the war, and their desire to fight for their freedom. I chose this because while I can imagine a man’s desire to fight for his freedom, I was curious as to how well that assistance was accepted. War gave hope of freedom to even the most remote and illiterate slaves. All slaves had the sense that one of the primary outcomes of the war would be the relinquishment of slavery. Free blacks and escaped slaves believe that if they fought next to the white man for their freedom it would prove that they were equal and deserved the same citizenship. At the beginning of the war the laws didn’t allow for blacks to join the

Lorraine Hansberry, the author of “A Raisin in The Sun”, was born in Chicago, Illinois. Hansberry was the youngest of four children. Her father Carl Augustus Hansberry was a prominent real estate broker and her mother Louise Perry was a stay home mother. She grew up on the south side of Chicago in the Woodlawn neighborhood. Later the family moved into an all-white neighborhood, where they experienced racial discrimination. Hansberry attended a predominantly white public school while her parents fought against segregation. In 1940 Hansberry’s father engaged in a Supreme Court case of Hansberry v. Lee which was a legal battle against a racially restrictive covenant that attempted to prohibit African-American families from buying homes in the area. As a result in Supreme Court case of Hansberry v. Lee it made the family subject to the hellishly hostile in their predominantly white neighborhood.

Inspired by Langston Hughes poem the play A Raisin in the Sun by Lorraine Hansberry debuted on Broadway in 1959. The play tells a tale of an impoverished black family living in Chicago’s Southside who is about to receive a hefty life insurance check. Although the plays setting is likely the 1940’s, A Raisin in the Sun can be best understood when viewed in the civil rights movement of the 1950’s and 1960’s in America because of its theme of dreams and its systematic racism and segregation. The systematic racism and segregation present thought out the play can be best understood if put in the context of the 1950’s and 1960’s.

The book, A Raisin in the Sun by Lorraine Hansberry, was written in 1957. The story, is the representation of a African American family, of five (Dambe, et al., 2014). The play is set in, South side of Chicago in the early 1945-1959 (SparkNotes, 2017). The play has three different acts in it, which show a few weeks inside a coloured family, who are earning the bare minimum. The whole play portrays the Younger family receiving some sort of check, which we don’t know the amount yet, or who the money is intended for.

A Raisin in the Sun by Lorraine Hansberry is a play that displays housing discrimination in Chicago during the 1950s. Housing discrimination was partially an effect of the Great Migration. This was an event during the 1950s that resulted in about six million African Americans “migrating” from the south to the north, Midwest, and west regions of the United States. This caused the population of black people in major northern cities to increase rapidly. They are then only able to live in certain neighborhoods, which keeps their communities segregated.

My grandpa used to be racist and sometimes he still says racist things to me, and he once said “you know before they never let Niggers fight the same fight as white people.” Also, because my family has many different races within us. The Tuskegee Airmen are something that sparked my interest because not only were they the first aviator pilots in the United States, but they were also black, and that’s huge for WWII. I would describe the Tuskegee Airmen; it would be pride, because of all they had accomplished throughout their years. They were very well educated and extremely smart, which not many blacks were. The Tuskegee Airmen would mark a new spot in history because they helped the military become desegregated. They were not the only black soldiers in the war but as I said before, my grandpa also fought in the war, He remembers when the whites couldn’t fight with the blacks. They were very racist back then, which is not a splendid thing to be relating this too, but it’s the truth. It’s what it was back then and part of who he is because of the way he's raised and taught back then. Learning about the reform movements was another topic I enjoyed learning. As you see in their title’s they were movement’s to make society a better place for people of all races and genders to live. I'm all for change, so learning about all the different

In the book “A Raisin in the Sun” by Lorraine Hansberry, there were characters whose dreams were stated, some of which were shattered by greed and misfortune and others which would eventually come to be true. The first dream that came about was Walter’s dream of one day owning and maintaining a liquor store. He would do anything to attempt to get his dream to come true, but his mama wanted anything but that to happen. His mama had a dream of her own though, she dreamed of one day owning her own house, where her whole family could stay comfortably. She dreamed this because in the apartment that she resided in was too small, and dumpy, as Ruth called it. Her grandson Travis had to sleep on the couch, and all

The movie “The Negro Soldier” was a very inspirational film that has changed the attitudes of many. This film was used to try and get black soldiers to enlist in the army and fight in the war. The film also portrayed blacks in very professional fields in society, such as lawyers, athletes, and other professions. In other movies in this time, blacks were portrayed as funny, uneducated characters. After this movie was made, blacks were perceived as more respectable roles in movies. Also in the movie, women were able to join the war. With this film progress was surely making its way into the society where equality was becoming more and

Lorraine Hansberry’s novel, A Raisin in the Sun, revolves around a middle-class African-American family, struggling during World War II. By reading about the Younger’s true to life experiences, one learns many important life lessons. One of the aforementioned would be that a person should always put family’s needs before their own. There are many examples of this throughout the novel. Just a few of these would be the example of Ruth and her unborn baby, Walter regaining the respect of his family, and Mama and her unselfish ways.

   “Why do some people persist despite insurmountable obstacles, while others give up quickly or never bother to try” (Gunton 118)? A Raisin in the Sun, a play by Lorraine Hansberry, is a commentary on life and our struggle to comprehend and control it. The last scene in the play between Asagai and Beneatha contrasts two contemporary views on why we keep on trying to change the future, and reaches the conclusion that, far from being a means to an end, the real meaning of life is the struggle. Whether we succeed or not, our lives are purposeful only if we have tried to make the world a better place for ourselves and others- only, in other words, if we follow our dreams.

Lorraine Hansberry is a play writer and the first female writer to have a play performed on broadway. Langston hughes is an american poet, playwright, and social activist. During the Harlem renaissance, Hansberry and Hughes met and Hughes left a deep influence on Hansberry and this motivated her to keep writing. At this time Hansberry wrote a Raisin In the Sun, which was based on the poem, “ A Dream Deferred.” This play was a huge success and was the youngest American playwright at age 29.

	In the play A Raisin in the Sun, the playwright Lorraine Hansberry depicts the life of an impoverished African American family living on the south side of Chicago. The Youngers, living in a small apartment and having dreams larger than the world in which the live, often use verbal abuse as a way to vent their problems. Many times, this verbal abuse leads to unnecessary conflict within the family. The most frequently depicted conflict is that between Walter and his sister Beneatha. Walter wants nothing more than to be a wealthy entrepreneur that can provide for his family, while Beneatha plans to go to medical school and become a doctor. Both characters are opposed to the others’ dreams. This

Many people go through different moralities in there life some that they believe can change their life for the better but don’t know the consequences. This ties in with issues involving money. Many people believe that money is the way to happiness and do what they can to get money even if it means to hurt your loved ones. In the play “Raisin in the Sun” Walter Lee Younger is man that lives in South Side Chicago and at point in life that he’s in, he wants to do something in his life and make a difference for colored people. The way he believes he can accomplish that is by opening a bar to make money for his family while believing money is the only source of happiness. Walters ideal morality was to make sure he got his hands on the insurance money so he could open up the bar even if it meant his family would suffer when things went wrong.