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.

Lorraine Hansberry was an African-American female playwright born in Chicago in 1930. Hansberry’s play, A Raisin in the Sun, has won awards such as the New York Drama Critics’ Circle Award for Best Play and is loosely based on events involving her own family. This play portrays a poor African-American

MAJOR WORKS REVIEW GENERAL 1. Title A Raisin in the Sun 2. Author Lorraine Hansberry 3. Date of Original Publication 1958 4. Novel Type Play STRUCTURE 1. Point of View Play; there is direct characterization from the playwright 2. Relationship to Meaning Not available 3. Plot Structure a. 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

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.

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.

A Raisin in the Sun 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

A Success of Life Walter is a man just like many others; he has a job, a family, and he also has ambitions in life just like anybody else. Walter is not the only one in his family that has ambitions, almost everybody else in his family have ambitions as well. These ambitions created conflicts between family members after they all found out that Walter's mother (Lena) have been settled by an insurance company for the death of her husband, and she is about to obtain a large sum of money.

The Importance of the Struggle in A Raisin in the Sun    “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.

Sensitive, naive, with lots of pride. When a man in the 1950s wants nothing in life but money and to be something successful in his life. How big of a risk will this young African American take to get what he wants? In A Raisin in the Sun, Lorraine Hansberry

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.

Worthless money itself All money brings is nothing but dreams and evil. Where there is money there is also dishonesty or corruption.. In a play called “A Raisin In The Sun” by Lorraine Hansberry, she focuses on the struggle that was faced by one African American family from late 1950s. As the play opens, the family are about to receive an insurance check for $10,000. This money comes from the death of Mr.Younger’s insurance policy. Everyone was very excited and were waiting for the money to be delivered. Each of the family members had an idea as to what he or she would like to do with this money. As the play continued the family begins to break apart because money played a negatively influence on the family. Hansberry uses the Younger

Conflict in A Raisin in the Sun 	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

A Harlem in the Sun: How Lorraine Hansberry and Langston Hughes Synergize Famed Harlem Renaissance poet Langston Hughes no doubt had an extensive reach to the African American community at that time. However, his influence can also be traced to other writers. Lorraine Hansberry was one such writer who used a line from Hughes’ poem “Harlem (Dream Deferred)” to center her play around. She even had the poem as a preface to her tale of the Younger family just trying to make life better during the time of segregation. Within this play, A Raisin in the Sun, Hansberry seamlessly applied Hughes’ concept of deferred dreams to demonstrate the struggle of the typical African American family through her title choice and the symbolism within the characters of Mama, Walter, and Beneatha.

At the end of the play the family is devastated of the news of Walter losing the money. But none more hurt than Walter, he feels like a failure and in current state made a decision that puts the story on hyperdrive and the audience on their heels. Walter calls Linder to make a deal about the house Moma bought. Right before Walter could even consider making the deal with Linder, Moma moved Travis in the room and forcing Walter to make a decision of a lifetime to Linder,

A Raisin in the Sun Essay In the critically acclaimed play A Raisin in the sun, Lorraine Hansberry uses Beneatha Younger as a symbol for women wanting more than to just be a housewife. The play takes place in the 1950’s, right after WWII and at the beginning of the cold war. All the men came home from the war and took their jobs back, causing women to revert to the traditional housekeeping ways. However, there was a mix between those who succumbed to social expectations and those who wanted more in life.