Deterred In Lorraine Hansberry's A Raisin In The Sun

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.

Not only is she black but she’s a woman so in the 1950s the whole world was against her. “I know―because that’s what it says in all the novels that men write. But it isn’t. Go ahead and laugh―but I’m not interested in being someone’s little episode in America[...] (page 64)” Beneatha is a feminist and a resilient character but every male figure in her life treats her dream like a joke and a phase. She is belittled by her own brother who tells her to just be a nurse. She is belittled by George Murchinson her boyfriend who tells her that she’s too pretty for thoughts and that her dream is just a girlish fantasy. Even Asagai treats her as lower to himself. But Beneatha has dreams. After seeing a child named Rufus get his face split open and thinking he’d never be put back together, she saw him later all fixed up by doctors. This was a life changing moment. From then on Beneatha wanted to be a doctor and she is working as hard as she can to get there. This money is crucial for Beneatha. In order to become a doctor she needs to go to medical school but in order to go to medical school she needs money. Half of the insurance money was supposed to go towards her college education but instead her brother lost it

In 1950 she decided to take a leap of faith and try to pursue a career of being a writer. She moves out to New York City and starts going to The New School but only one year later she moves out to Harlem so involve herself in the activist struggles. In 1951 she started working writing newspapers for black freedom.Lorraine Hansberry wrote a poem called “Lynch Song” inspired from Willie McGee's court case.

Lorraine Hansberry was born May 19th, 1930, in Chicago, Illinois. She was the youngest of seven children, and was the granddaughter of a slave. Her mother was a school teacher, and her father was a real estate broker. In 1938, her family moved to an all-white neighborhood and were victims of racist crimes and violence. They refused to move until the Supreme Court ruled in favor of Lee in the Hansberry v. Lee case. With the judge ruling in favor of Lee, who sued so that no African- Americans could live in their neighborhood, the Hansberry’s were forced to move. Hansberry, unlike her parents who went to southern, all black universities, attended the University of Wisconsin. She dropped out two years later after changing her major from fine art to writing and moved to New York where she attended the New School for Social Research. She then worked for the Freedom newspaper as a writer and associate editor from 1950 to 1953. Between the Freedom newspaper and working as a waitress she wrote in her free time. She decided she liked writing

The play by Lorraine Hansberry, A Raisin in the Sun, presents an African-American family living in poverty in the 1950’s. The family receives ten thousand dollars from deceased Mr. Younger’s insurance; the money is supposed to be distributed in buying a house, Beneatha’s education, and Walter’s liquor store investment. However, Walter invests wrongly and loses more than half of the money, forcing Beneatha to consider moving to Africa to pursue an education. Beneatha Younger’s struggle with segregation while pursuing her dream of becoming a doctor demonstrates that education can be obtained with determination and discipline.

Lorraine Hansberry was the first Black woman to pen a Broadway play. In her writings, she wrote male characters, many of whom were male protagonists. Being the feminist that she was, many people saw Hansberry’s depiction of Black men in one of two ways; either as an unhappy retreat from her feminist concerns or as a negative representation of Black manhood. Throughout her career, in works such as “The Village Voice” and “Les Blancs” Hansberry’s wrote other male characters that showed a progressive, revolutionary movement towards a positive and withstanding view of Black masculinity.

Dreams are vital to human existence. Without them, a depressing life such as the one the Youngers have in the play A Raisin In The Sun by Lorraine Hansberry, would be utterly unbearable. The Youngers were strong and faithful, continuously trying to make their dreams become reality. Even though they were a family plagued by the hardship of poverty, they pushed on through whatever obstacles they encountered. Beneatha, one of the main characters, had the American dream of becoming a doctor, which is affected by her individualism, determination, and expressiveness.

“ A Raisin in the Sun” is a play written by Lorraine Hansberry about the life of an African American family during the era of segregation. The play starts off with the Younger family receiving a 10,000 dollar check from Mr. Younger’s insurance policy. The family argues over what they are going to do with it. Mama wants to buy a house with it, Walter wants to invest in a liquor store, and Beneatha wants to use the money to go to medical school. The contrast of the characters’ personalities fuels the conflict and drives the story forward. Beneatha is a young college student and the sister of Walter. She has a dream of becoming a doctor. Beneatha is a dynamic character who is easily influenced by her family and the people

Beneatha is a character that shows the struggles of an African American female at the time. Beneatha’s struggle is trying to become a doctor when others are telling her to give up on her dream. Walter, Beneatha’s brother, says, “Who the hell told you you had to be a doctor? If you so crazy 'bout messing 'round with sick people—then go be a nurse like other women—or just get married and be quiet” (Hansberry 12-13). This is evident that Walter does not believe that Beneatha should become a doctor because it goes against the social norms of the time. Ruth shows determination by continuing her dream even with her family putting her down.

Lorraine Hansberry was born in Chicago on May 19, 1930, the youngest of four children. Her parents were well-educated, successful black citizens who publicly fought discrimination against black people. When Hansberry was a child, she and her family lived in a black neighborhood on Chicago’s South Side. During this era, segregation—the enforced separation of whites and blacks—was still legal and widespread throughout the South. Northern states, including Hansberry’s own Illinois, had no official policy of segregation, but they were generally self-segregated along racial and economic lines. Chicago was a striking example of a city carved into strictly divided black and white neighborhoods. Hansberry’s family became one of the first to move into

To make a connection of Lorraine Hansberry to the social realism movement, a brief biography can help to explain this relation. Particularly, Lorraine was a black American born in the 1930s to the underprivileged portion of the South Side of Chicago. Being of this era, her father was a very successful real estate agent and her mother, a local school teacher. Still regardless of her family wealth, unfortunately, they are forced to reside in the undesirable poor section of the city, as many other black families had. With prospect opportunities, her family then has the desires to move to a white privileged neighborhood. Here, they are met with much rejection almost immediately that lead her father to take legal actions. Due to the color of their skin, like others, she faced the many complexities of racial segregation, discrimination, and violence. There later became a time to address those issues by way of the Civil Rights Movement, looking to end racial segregation and gain equal opportunities for those of African descent. Noted in an American History Journal, the author emphasized that, “[Critics] maintained that the civil rights movement failed to produce significant reforms in either education or housing, despite vigorous campaigns by local and national organizations”( Broussard 1394 ). Even after the Jim Crow laws of the South were extinguished, many African Americans journeyed to

As a child she get jumped when she had a white fur coat on by some children because she was a African American little girl wearing a white fur coat which showed she had money to spend. Yet Lorraine's big step in life was going to a integrated college in Wisconsin Madison with integrating dorms, which she lead the movement for. She was also apart of a newspaper called freedom. The play that she wrote won, first black women who got play of the year, the youngest one to get it and the first women to win it. Her play was performed all over the world, after she died there was a bug funeral for her and the song “To be young gifted and black” was performed.

“I mean it! I’m just tired of hearing about God all the time. What has He got to do with anything?” (Hansberry, page 33). A Raisin in the Sun, play written by Lorraine Hansberry, depicts a poor black family in the Southside of Chicago waiting on an insurance payment to better their lives. The family consists of Ruth, Walter, Travis, Beneatha, and Mama. Beneatha being the daughter of Mama. Throughout the play Beneatha struggles with her identity, and her role as a black woman in her society. She’s an optimist, she wants the best for herself and her family, her personality is outspoken and indecisive.

Lorraine Hansberry, the author of A Raisin in the Sun, supports the theme of her play from a montage of, A Dream Deferred, by Langston Hughes. Hughes asks, “What happens to a dream deferred?” He suggests many alternatives to answering the question. That it might “dry up like a raisin in the sun,” or “fester like a sore.” Yet the play maybe more closely related to Hughes final question of the poem, “Or does it explode?” The play is full of bombs that are explosions of emotion set off by the frustration of the Younger family, who are unable to grasp the possible reality of their dreams. The family shares the dream of having a better life but compete against each other for the insurance money given to Mama after her husband’s death. The

	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