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A Raisin In The Sun Walter Lee Character Traits

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Ambitious. Persistent. Defiant. How can one person go from only thinking about their own dreams to thinking about an entire family's dreams? In A Raisin in the Sun by Lorraine Hansberry, the oldest child in the Younger family, Walter Lee, who is an ambitious, persistent, and defiant man who sets out to open a liquor store and give his family a good life instead of living in a bad area all of their lives. Walter has a low paying job and is expected to provide the money for his wife, child, sister, and mother, who all live in a run-down apartment in the South side of Chicago. His dream is to give his family a better life. His selfishness and unwillingness to listen to his family is the main cause for all of his problems as well as his family's problems. In a very small, Younger household, there are five people who live there. Mama, or Lena, who is the matriarch of the family. Walter, the oldest child who is supposed to provide and take care of the money for the family. Beneatha, the youngest child who dreams of becoming a doctor someday, something that is uncommon in the 1950s for an African American person. Ruth, Walter’s wife and the peacekeeper of the household, is a quiet woman in charge of making sure the house is clean and the chores are done. Lastly, …show more content…

He also feels like they deserve a better life because of how supportive they have been of him and how they never gave up on him, even when times got bad. Although Walter’s intentions are good, he does not express them so that they sound good. He wastes all of the money that his mother gave him, he focuses too much on achieving his goal that he loses sight of what is really important here, and that is his family. He becomes too selfish and does not think about the consequences that could come back to haunt him and his

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