Examples Of Segregation In A Raisin In The Sun

As we see from her first entrance, Beneatha is a loud and outspoken character. She is a single young female living in a home with Ruth and Mama. Quite similar as characters, they share traditional values and believe women should care for the wellbeing of their family. Ruth and Mama take pride in doing domestic service work as their source of income and are continuously seen putting their children’s needs before theirs. Hansberry uses Beneatha’s character to contradict these values and introduce a character with modern feminist views. Beneatha fiercely fires back to anyone who questions her life goals. She is constantly found bickering with Walter about her dream of becoming a doctor. She is reminded by him that “girls” shouldn’t be doctors. Beneatha voices her feelings on male dependency when she mentions to Mama and Ruth “Listen, I’m going to be a doctor. I’m not worried about who I’m going to marry yet - if I ever get married”, and they respond with a shocked “if!”(50). The idea of a woman not wanting to get married was shocking to Mama and Ruth. Beneatha feels that she does not need to be dependent on a man; she has one goal, to become a doctor. She does not need a man in her life, she feels perfectly

Another theme and issue that arrives from the play A Raisin in the Sun, by Lorraine Hansberry, is racism. During the 1950’s blacks and whites were segregated. The house the Younger’s purchased was in the Clybourne Park neighborhood, an all white neighborhood. When Lena told the family they were moving to Clybourne Park they stood with amazement. “Mama, there ain’t no colored people in Clybourne Park” (p.734). The family heard of other colored families’ houses being set on fire in this neighborhood, they were concerned that the same thing would happen to them.

The drama A Raisin in the Sun by Lorraine Hansberry, shows the life of the Youngers, an African-American family living on the Southside of Chicago in the 1950s. In the beginning, the Youngers are about to receive an insurance check for $10,000. This money comes from the deceased Mr. Younger’s life insurance policy. Each of the adult members of the family has an idea as to what he or she would like to do with this money. Mama, wants to buy a house to fulfill a dream she shared with her husband. Mama’s son, Walter Lee, would rather use the money to invest in a liquor store with his friends. He believes that the investment will solve the family’s financial problems forever. Beneatha, Walter’s sister and Mama’s daughter, wants to use the money for her medical school tuition. Ruth, Walter’s wife, discovers that she is pregnant, but

In the play A Raisin in the Sun by Lorraine Hansberry you go back in time to when segregation was still aloud. In this play you meet a cast of people with dreams of a better life. The American Dream, to be specific. This dream is portrayed differently for each character, all of which impact the play. Two of these character

Lorraine Hansberry’s play, A Raisin in the Sun, centers on an African American family in the late 1950s. Hansberry directs her work towards specifically the struggles faced by African Americans during the late 1950s. Through the dialogue and actions of her characters, she encourages not only a sense of pride in heritage, but a national and self-pride in African Americans as well.

In The Politics of “Home” in Lorraine Hansberry 's A Raisin in the Sun, Kristin Matthews said: “This literal home mirrors the psycho-social struggle of mid-century African Americans to attain, secure, and define a sense of place, or “home,” in the face of systemic socio-economic racism” (Matthews). The play opens with Ruth Younger waking up her son, Travis, for school. By this point, the audience can see poverty already. To put it into context, Ruth woke up and is walking through the living room—that has been worn and it is visible that the furniture has been supporting” too many people for too many years” (Hansberry, 998)—and she tries to wake up Travis, who is seen sleeping on the sofa. The house is crowded to the point where Walter and Ruth Younger’s son is in a situation where the only place to sleep is the sofa. That is a sign of economic poverty, simply because the family cannot afford to live in a place where their son has a bedroom. The house is an apartment that homes: Lena “Mama”, Walter, Ruth, Travis, and Beneatha Younger. It is a two-bedroom unit housing five people. There, again, is a sign of economic poverty, because this is a family that cannot support themselves to live in an adequate setting. The mere fact that three generations need to share a living

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.

Through Mr. Lindner’s visit to the Younger’s family, A Raisin in the Sun demonstrates racially segregated nature of Chicago’s neighborhood, and how the Younger family suffered emotional trauma in their everyday life due to their race in the form of stress they had to experience due to the non-violent tactics used by the people to racially segregate them from other people in the community, further leading them to have lesser options to improve their status.

    Lorraine Hansberry faced many obstacles in her life which has made her  write this book A “Raisin in the Sun.” As said in Blooms Literature “She was the youngest of four children whose parents were well-educated, middle-class activists centrally engaged in the fight against racial discrimination. Early figures in the Civil Rights movement.” In the book “A Raisin in the Sun,” the first play written by an African American she made through experiences of  black people who live on Chicago’s South Side, Hansberry used members of her family as inspiration for her characters. Lorraine Hansberry life had comparisons in this book dealing with poverty

The story of this play is simple and the majority of African-Americans faced such issues in the 1950’s, living on the south side of Chicago, struggles with poverty, dignity and dreams of a better life. Wanting better for your children and trying to fit in, while maintaining family values. A Raisin in the Sun is an excellent example of the relationship between family values and conflict. In this play it portrays: values and purpose of dreams, the need to fight for racial discrimination and the importance of family.

Though there was a heightened sense of tension over civil rights in the late 1950s when A Raisin in the Sun was written, racial inequality is still a problem today. It affects minorities of every age and dynamic, in more ways than one. Though nowadays it may go unnoticed, race in every aspect alters the way African-Americans think, behave, and react as human beings. This is shown in many ways in the play as we watch the characters interact. We see big ideas, failures, and family values through the eyes of a disadvantaged group during an unfortunate time in history. As Martin Luther King said, Blacks are “...harried by day and haunted by night by the fact that you are a Negro, living constantly at tiptoe stance, never quite knowing what

A Raisin in the Sun was a play written in the late 1950’s analyzing the cruel effects of racism amongst the Younger family. The younger family suffers from racial discrimination within their living space, place of employment, and the housing industry. Racism has been going on for a very long time in the United States and will always continue to exist. Racism has not only led to political but also social issues. "A Raisin in the Sun confronted Whites for an acknowledgement that a black family could be fully human, 'just like us."(qtd. White fear.) The setting took place in the ghetto, south of Chicago where mainly African Americans settled. In this division, apartments and houses were overly priced, crowded and poorly maintained. Crime rates were extremely high and most families lived in poverty. Due to segregated housing, it was a daily struggle for black families who had hopes in leaving the ghetto for better lives.

In the words of Jim Cocola and Ross Douthat, Hansberry wrote the play A Raisin in the Sun to mimic how she grew up in the 1930s. Her purpose was to tell how life was for a black family living during the pre-civil rights era when segregation was still legal (spark notes). Hansberry introduces us to the Youngers’, a black family living in Chicago’s Southside during the 1950s pre-civil rights movement. The Younger family consists of Mama, who is the head of the household, Walter and Beneatha, who are Mama’s children, Ruth, who is Walter’s wife, and Travis, who is Walter and Ruth’s son. Throughout the play the Youngers’ address poverty, discrimination, marital problems, and abortion. Mama is waiting on a check from the

In the play A Raisin in the Sun written by Lorraine Hansberry, a story about an African American family living in Chicago. The book illustrates what the daily problems of an average black family had to deal with while living in America in the 1950s and their struggle of overcoming obstacles to reach their “dream”. Hansberry use this novel to address topics such as racism, racial inequality, and racial discrimination. In 1954, many people during that time supported segregation. People perceived whites and blacks completely different and people wanted them to be separate. Everywhere in the south had “whites only” or “colored”, and many wanted to keep it that way. History will always repeat itself and people are not

	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