An Analysis Of Lorraine Hansberry's A Raisin In The Sun

This character is a static and a round character. She is the mother of Walter and Beneatha. All she’s ever wanted was a new home to pass down to Travis one day and a garden. Mama has the most responsibility, she struggles to do the right thing for each of the five members of the family. With this much pressure she wants to support the idea that Walter Lee has of investing in a liquor store, but it’s a selfish act because it wouldn’t be for the family and also considering the fact that they aren’t business people. Throughout this play Mama stays strong and that’s what makes her a static character. What makes her a round character was the moment she told Ruth that her children frighten her, this is contradicting because she dedicates her life to her children and she also struggles to instill her values to them.

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.

In Langston Hughes’ poem “Harlem,” he discusses the idea of unfulfilled dreams and their plausible outcomes using symbolism and imagery. He initially describes a “deferred” dream as a sun-dried raisin, depicting the dream originally as a fresh grape that now has dried up and “turned black” (Jemie 63). This idea provides Lorraine Hansberry’s play A Raisin in the Sun with its basic foundation, for it is a play about a house full of unfulfilled dreams. As the poem goes on, Hughes depicts the idea of a deferred dream as something rotten or gone bad. According to Onwuchekwa Jemie, this may be an allusion to the American Dream and its empty promises (Jemie 64).

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

Lorraine Hansberry was born in Chicago on March 19, 1930 Tillman. She was an African American. She was one of four siblings that includes two brothers and one sister. In the 1930’s racism and segregation was prevalent in the time. Her parents were civil rights activist Carl and Nannie Hansberry Tillman. She grew up in the Woodlawn neighborhood on Chicago's South Side Rane. Her family was one of the wealthy African-American families in Chicago. When she was five years old, her parents got her a fur coat. She wore it to school one day and she got beaten for wearing it. Also when she was eight years old she moved to the white suburbs of Chicago and once her and her family arrived at their new homes they were threatened by mobs of white people. She nearly died after getting hit in the head with a brick. Her father went to court to fight for the legal right to live in that new neighborhood.The Supreme Court case of Hansberry v. Lee Weston Playhouse Theater Company. The characters in A Raisin in the Sun are black and live in Chicago just like Hansberry. The characters are also going through segregation/racism, similar to Hansberry.

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 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.

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

In the play, A Raisin In The Sun, Mother tries to keep everything under control because she believes in her children and their dreams, yet understands that they still need to learn and strengthen their value's as they begin to realize their own aspirations. She is the head of the family around whom the conflicts arise and are resolved.

   “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’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.

   We can learn a great deal by observing a given moment in history. The politics, fashion, and religion of a given society reveal the inner workings of the individuals that combine to make the society functional. While every society is different and unique, there are universal themes that apply to every society; the need to eat and sleep as well as the concept of "family" exist in all societies. In Lorraine Hansberry's "A Raisin in the Sun," we are witness to the common drama that occurs within a family set in a specific historical period.

Hansberry includes one of the most significant juxtapositions concerning blacks and whites towards the end of the play when Mr. Linder goes to the Younger household. The mere presence Lindner creates a sense of racial prejudice, for he is there to convince the Youngers not to move to Clybourne Park. When talking to the Younger family, Lindner struggles with being straightforward. He tells the Youngers that he is a part of a welcoming committee, and that he is at their home to talk about “what the association calls-(He looks elsewhere)-uh-special community problems” (Hansberry 155). Hansberry’s use of dashes in Lindner’s dialogue shows how he is uncomfortable, and the fact that Lindner is avoiding eye contact with the Younger further emphasizes his incompetence. In addition, Lindner’s use of the word “problem” to describe black presence in a white neighborhood creates a derogatory tone. It connects to the idea many whites had back then, which was the blacks being an inferior race. Hansberry, however, intentionally includes a character like Lindner to prove her point that blacks assimilating towards American culture will only diminish their status even further. When critics read the play, they often wonder about its universality because they

In some works of literature, a character who appears briefly, or does not appear at all, is a significant presence. In this book one of these characters have a big impact on the story because the story takes place around the 1950’s. During the 1950’s there was still a lot of racism around and the main characters are african american while the character who appears briefly is a white man.

	Throughout A Raisin in the Sun, Lorraine Hansberry does not avoid the harsh, yet realistic facts of African American life during the 50’s. Conflict is one of many realistic characteristics of life that are portrayed in the play. Above all, the conflict between Walter and Beneatha is the most