A Raisin In The Sun Essay

In A Raisin In the Sun Lorraine Hansberry uses everyday objects-a plant, money, and a home to symbolize a family's struggle to deal with racism and oppression in their everyday lives, as well as to exemplify their dreams. She begins with a vivid description of the family's weary, small, and dark apartment in Chicago's ghetto Southside during the 1950s. The Youngers are an indigent African-American family who has few choices in their white society. Each individual of the Younger family has a separate dream-Beneatha wants to become a doctor, Walter wants to open a liquor store, and Ruth and Mama want a new and better home. The Youngers struggle to accomplish these dreams throughout the play, and a major aspect of their happiness and

In the play, A Raisin in the Sun, by Lorraine Hansberry, and 1961 movie written by Lorraine Hansberry and presented by Columbia pictures, one of the most important themes is the American Dream. Many of the characters have hopes and dreams. They all strive towards their goals throughout. However, many of the characters have different dreams that clash with each other. Problems seem to arise when different people’s dreams conflict with one another.   Another theme is racism. Racism was rampant during the 1950’s and this often hindered African American dreams.

During the 1900s many black families barely had enough money to pay for the basic necessities needed to live. At times some families would receive a significant sum of money, something they were not used to getting. Deciding on how to spend this money is what caused problems among some families. In the play A Raisin in the Sun by Lorraine Hansberry, she argues that there are times when in a state of financial instability and where money is a necessity to completing one’s dream that some family members choose to put their dreams over others when suddenly given the opportunity. After Mama’s husband died she was bound to receive an insurance check that would be used by the Younger family. Before even receiving the

The predicament that Walter finds him-self in motivates him to want to invest in a liquor store in order to grasp some type of financial freedom. He doesn’t just want to have enough money to provide for his family, but he tells his mother, “I want so many things” (74). He is obsessed with earning a lot of money. At the beginning of the play Walter is waiting for Mama's check from the insurance company as if it was his own, and Beneathea has to remind Walter that, “that money belongs to Mama, Walter and if is for her to decide how she wants to spend it” (36). Here we see how he is searching for his identity with money. Much of Walter’s dialog is about making money or who has money. When his wife Ruth mentions that his friend Willy Harris is a good for nothing loud mouth, Walter retorts; “...And what do know about good for nothing loud mouth? Charlie Atkins was just a good-for-nothing loud mouth too, wasn’t he! He wanted me to go in the dry-cleaning business with him, and now he’s grossing a hundred thousand a year. A hundred thousand dollars a year! You still call him a loud mouth!” (32) The idea of making a hundred thousand dollars is what he had most on his mind, and to Walter the liquor store is how he will achieve that. The liquor store represents an

The saying “money can’t make you happy” is a popular and controversial statement. For someone with money it is almost unfair of them to comment, for someone without money this can be used as a comfort and a way to look past financial issues. But in Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun we take an indepth look on how money can really affect a family that prior to the death of a father and husband, had no money. Hansberry begins her play with Langston Hughes's poem Harlem (Dream Deferred). The poem begins with a lofty question, “What happens to a dream deferred (line one)?” And it continues as so:

A Raisin in the Sun, by Lorraine Hansberry shows how people’s actions can be perceived as both good and bad. In this play, the Younger family is trying to achieve the American dream, “the ideals of freedom, equality, and opportunity traditionally held to be available to every American”(cite dictionary.com). The Youngers are a black family living in a poor part of Chicago. The family inherits ten thousand dollars from a relative. Each family member has their own idea about how to use this money to fulfill their dreams. The play uses the decisions of the family members to make the reader think about what are the right choices. Mama is the matriarch of the family, and she wants to use the money to buy a house in a white neighborhood. She wants to move to this neighborhood because it is a better environment for her family. Lindor is a man who lives in the white neighborhood and he appears to make decisions for the benefit of the family. The decisions that Mama and Lindor make and the actions they take can be viewed as good or bad for both the individual and the community.

Lorraine Hansberry’s play “A Raisin in the Sun,” was a radically new representation of black life, resolutely authentic, fiercely unsentimental, and unflinching in its vision of what happens to people whose dreams are constantly deferred.

The play A Raisin in the Sun illustrates the social and economic pressure that is placed on the Younger family, especially Beneatha who aspires to become a doctor at the time where not many women could even imagine such aspirations. The Younger family's daughter Beneatha is an outspoken intelligent member who raises the argument for the other side of the spectrum at all times. Beneatha is aspiring to become a doctor and has some hope that some of the money from her father's social insurance cheque would help go to her medical school. The pressure of being lower middle class severely affects the relationships of the Younger family as Walter, Beneatha's older brother shows no regard for his sister as he sees her as the only one in the house not

A Raisin in the sun shows the hardship many needed to face in order to attain this notion of the American Dream. The play did more than simply show what everyone faced, she shows the struggles that many African Americans families had to face when trying to achieve the notion of the American Dream. She does this by showing the environment that many African Americans lived in when there was bombing in the neighborhood or when white people would force African Americans who finally bought a home, out. Lorraine also shows the struggles of the characters of the play like Walter who struggles with the decision he makes and the contradictions that stop him from achieving his goals of being wealthy or when Beneatha goes against the norms of society by becoming a Doctor and trying to do activities that men usually do.While American Dream is quintessential to America because you’re able to go from nothing to something, this notion is unique to African-American since the society work against them even with having the same aspiration because of the prejudice they faced from the society.

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

Throughout Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun, we see the positive and negative effects of chasing the American Dream. Hansberry expresses her different views on the American Dream through the characters and she portrays the daily struggles of a 1950 black family throughout A Raisin in the Sun. In this play, she is able to effectively show the big impact that even small decisions can make on a family. Hansberry shows the many different attachments that come with the fulfillment of this American Dream. Throughout A Raisin in the Sun, each family member has their own pursuit of happiness, which is accompanied by their American Dream.

In Langston Hughes poem Harlem, he discuses a “dream deferred” throughout the whole poem. Hughes discuses what happens when people let go or forget about their dreams. In lines two and three, Hughes says “Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun?”. He is still talking about the dreams here trying to figure out what actually happened to it. A raisin starts off as a grape. Grapes are known as being juicy and colorful. When becoming a raisin, grapes are set out in the sun to dry out. When raisins dry out, they become brown and shriveled losing all their water. Although both are very nutritious for you, raisins contain no water and are not regarded as a fruit. They look dead. Grapes on the other hand are plumb and filled with water. They are colorful and are seen as alive. Langston Hughes uses a grapes, raisins, and sun symbolically. Grapes refers to peoples dreams, raisins stand for peoples “deferred dreams”, and the sun represents society. During childhood our dreams are colorful and full of life like grapes, but eventually society/reality dries them up like the sun dries up a raisin. The end product is our reality, other wise known as a raisin. During the 1920's, many young African-Americans gave up on their childhood dreams because of society old them they could not do it. Langston Hughes seems frustrated with this and does not understand

In fact, poverty that the black community experiences has a direct correlation to discrimination, as Tayebeh Nowrouzi claims, “Big Walter 's life was a constant suffering from his discriminated hostile economic and social world… he could not escape the despair and poverty that discrimination imposed on African Americans” (Nowrouzi et.al. 2272). In arguing this claim, Nowrouzi is explaining that economic poverty is due to racism and discrimination. The phrase “he could not escape” confirms how although Big Walter worked diligently his whole life, the poverty and economic failure was an impending doom. Moreover, the use of the words “constant suffering” suggests that Big Walter and the black community have been dealing with poverty and economic disparity for as long as they have been alive. The life of Big Walter is very symbolic because the treatment of African-Americans has not changed from his lifetime to Walter and Travis’s lifetime. The legacy that A Raisin in the Sun has left in modern society is very negative because the play demonstrates a profoundly racist and discriminated point of view of African-American poverty. However, not only does the play show differences in the welfare of African-Americans compared to whites, it also illustrates the theme of money and greed.

Everybody has dreams and goals that they hope to attain one day; this ambition and motivation is what keeps people going through life, even in tough times. However, what happens when a person’s goal of accomplishing a dream is halted temporarily or even indefinitely? This is what Langston Hughes explores in his poem called Harlem, and the various effects of having a dream deferred are encountered in the play A Raisin in the Sun. In fact, the play gets its name from the poem as one line in the poem asks, “Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun?”, and it is this poem that allows the reader to better understand what is going on in the play. In the play A Raisin in the Sun, Lorraine Hansberry keeps up a sustained allusion to Langston Hughes’s