A Raisin In The Sun Willy Harris Greed

Mama instructed Walter to deposit three thousand for Beneatha’s medical schooling and the remaining money for the household. Walter instead made a business transaction that he believed would change his family’s life for the better, only to find out he made a grave error. Willy Harris ran off with all the money! The family is devastated and mama believe they are not able to move and decided to fix up their current home.

Suggesting that Willie’s ability to make intelligent political decisions results from this self knowledge, Warren implicitly states that Willie’s hospital project is his attempt to right all of his wrongs—to rectify all of his sins he has committed in the political arena. Warren suggests a major theme of the novel: man is “finite and corrupt” and is constantly striving to discover the “infinite and incorruptible” (Beebe 126). Through this religious concept of the pervasiveness of sin, Warren describes Willie as half genius, half demon: he plans schools, roads, straightforward tax plans and a hospital for the poor while also cruelly crushing his political opponents, and using bribes and manipulation for electoral gain.

In the beginning Walter is very selfish and only seems to care about the liquor store, he even asks Beneatha why she can’t just be a nurse or marry a rich man. The reason he says this to her is because he wants her to not go to medical school. Walter would rather invest the money rather than use it to pay for her schooling. Walter puts his own selfish needs before his family’s

Walter Lee is stubborn, very ambitious, and filled with pride at the beginning of the story. He strives for success with the money “Mama,” also known as Lena got from the life insurance from her husband who recently passed away. Walter was so selfish all he wanted was to provide a better life for he and his family because he was not satisfied with their current standards of living. He wants more and wishes to become rich because he believes he never had enough growing up, but at the same time he wants to provide money and societal respect for his family. He put his trust with the money into a person who betrayed him and he ended up losing it all including his sisters schooling money. After this scene in the play Walter was at his lowest point,

The Younger family has not been able to experience the finer things in life, and Walter, being the authoritative male figure, feels he is at fault knows that a change is needed. Walter’s solution is to use his father’s life insurance money to fund the acquiring of a liquor license. The women of the household are always ordering around Walter. It’s Ruth, Mama, or Beneatha telling him how to run things, and when he gets a chance to take the initiative by using the money to invest in his liquor license, his friend betrays him, and his dreams are crushed.

In Lorraine's Hansberry A Raisin In The Sun. Walter wants to make money to support his family. He wants money because he thinks it makes him a “man”. How ever when his money is stolen, Walter’s perceptions of manhood shifts from valuing wealth and power to valuing family and pride.

Walter presumes that ‘it’s always money’ and how Mama can’t use it in the right way. Walter later responds that ‘money is life,’ explaining to Mama that success is now defined by how much money one has. This conversation takes place early in the play and reveals Mama’s and Walters economic struggles. However we see a turn of events when Walter plans to accept Mr. Lindner’s offer. Walter is not concerned with the degrading implications of the business deal; it is simply a way to recover some of the lot money. However, Hansberry challenges Walter’s crude interpretation of the American Dream by forcing him to actually carry out the transaction in front of his son. Walter’s inability to deal with Mr. Linder marks a significant revision of his interpretation of the American Dream. Walter comes to a realisation that money is not everything and how family is so much more valuable. During the late 1950’s money was defined as one of the main characteristics of a man, and who that man will become. Walters dream is to obtain enough money to provide enough for his family, this dream of his suggests how his American Dream is also vanished, as money was an immense part of this dream of his. Wily Loman is the complete opposite; he fails to understand that there is so much more to becoming successful than being rich. The failure to understand this concept brought him to a sudden death. Willy is like every

Walter seems to be overcome with a search for power and a drive to become wealthy and leave the life of being a worker behind him. It also shows that he cares for his family seeing how he is striving to give them the best, but that aspect is overshadowed by his greed. I feel the scene also shows the Younger family at its lowest point in the movie. Walter is on the complete edge and is thinking of stealing a community's money and the rest of the family, besides Momma, seemed to lose their faith and trust in him. When things seemed hopeless with the loss of the money, they only became worse as a loss in more than money occurred. A loss in their character, faith, history, and respect for each other overcame the family, particularly Walter and Beneatha. Nevertheless, Momma soon sets Beneatha straight with an emotional and positive speech about how there is "always something left to love" and sets the standard that the family should adhere to. It marks the turning point at the end of the movie

There are a few point in the play when the Youngers get disappointed. While reading this play you will realize that the disillusionment all starts because of the lost of the money from the insurance check from his father's death. At one point in the play Walter gets super disappointed when he finds out that Willy, someone he thought was his friend, ran off with all the money Mama trusted him with. Walter says “... Man… I trusted you… Man, I put my life in your hands…

Beneatha is referring to the fact that Walter plots and schemes get more ridiculous as time goes on. She wonders however, if there will be a limit to just how far he will go to attempt to provide a better life. He plans to go into business with his friends and buy a liquor store. However, furthermore, Mama will not allow him to spend obtained insurance check for 10,000 dollars, and instead plans to give most of her money to Beneatha for medical school. Walter, in a way, is jealous of his sister, for she will be able to fulfill her dreams of becoming a doctor. He, however, will have to keep living a monotonous life, not being able to support his family the way that he would like. He is also angry because Beneatha will get a large sum of Mama’s insurance money, and he will not receive a penny. This dispute leads to general hostility and overall anger in the household. Because of this animosity, there is much verbal abuse that takes place within the household, and also leads to the Walter’s alcohol abuse. Throughout the play, Lorraine Hansberry displays conflict through the lives of her characters.

Showing his frustration to his mother, Walter does not feel like he will ever acquire his dream because he feels like he never got the chance or opportunity to. The inability of not able to provide a better life for his household is causing him to stress, act out of character and clouding his decision making. With nowhere else to turn he thought he could use his father’s life insurance money to invest into a liquor store which turned into a scam. Walter feeling trapped from making advancements in life, he makes a huge mistake and learns from this error. In the play Walter is talking to mother describing his anger,

In the book, “a raisin in the sun”, by Lorraine Hansberry, one main theme is that Money is both good and bad.

Walter struggles in understanding who he needs to be for his family. He wants to take his place as the patriarch of the family, but he feels incapable of providing them with the lifestyle they deserve. This concern is always at the forefront of his mind, and it affects his attitude and outlook. The anxiety that Walter is dealing with creates confrontation with his sister. He fears that her dream will interfere with his own agenda of making a better life for his family. The severity of the tension becomes more and more apparent with Walter’s unwise investment. Walter is dealing with the burden that he has let his family down, while Beneatha is flabbergasted by the reality that her future has been snatched away from her, and she had no control over it. While reflecting on the situation, Beneatha remarks, “ I sound like a human who just had her future taken right out of my hands! While I was sleeping….things were happening in this world that directly concerned me and nobody consulted me—they just went out and did things—and changed my life” (Hansberry 3.15). Walter and Beneatha’s individual issues with the outcome of the situation cause them to find fault with one another during a time when their family needs to pull together to get through such a financial hardship. Walter is in an emotional pit; his turning to alcohol and music instead of his family for support expands the

There is conflict through the remainder of the play between Mama and Walter because he blames her for the loss of his dream. Walter had a dream of investing in a liquor store. He thought it would make him millions of dollars, and allow him to provide for his family. Eventually, she decides to allow Walter to have control of the remainder of the money. She gives specific instructions to set-aside a portion of the remaining money for Beneatha’s education and the rest was for him to decide (107). She does not exert this control over her children for the sake of maintaining power, rather to continue to provide for them. She willingly relinquishes her power as matriarch and tells Walter “to be the head of this family from now on like you supposed to be” (107). Putting the happiness of her children before her own is what almost any mother would do.

Apart from Willy’s delusion of his own success, he also sees his sons as great successes in the business world, and that they will amount to so much in their lives. These boys cannot be successful because they have been “[blown] so full of hot air [they] could never stand taking orders from anybody” (131). Willy’s illusions about his sons not only ruined Willy’s life, but it caused these boys to have a false sense of reality, which is the theme. This false sense of reality leads to their downfall in the business world because Willy had built them up so high that they believed they should be the one giving the orders, not taking them. When Willy tells his boys “together [you] could absolutely lick the civilized world” (64), this is an example of the way Willy falsely sees his boys and fills their