Is The Lengths Of Our Fingers Are So?

In Lorraine Hansberry’s 1959 play A Raisin in the Sun a number of social issues are both explicitly and subtly exemplified through out the characters experiences and relationships. Living in a cramped Chicago apartment, the Youngers’ display both influential goals and conflicting restraints. Beneatha Youngers is a controversial character; she complicates society’s typical gender roles, introduces the wrestle between assimilation and ancestry of African-Americans, but specifically serves as a paradigm for her generation in the play.

A Raisin in the Sun skillfully exemplifies many aspects of ‘black’ culture, especially how different ‘black archetypes’ may make different decisions based on how they see race and themselves within a culture. This is impertinent as a plot device in the play, and in the culture itself which the play is expressing. Black men at the time were forced to consider themselves into a certain way both for themselves and their families, and this play show’s how that unnecessary consideration can affect their decision making and overall desires. There are three ‘black man’ archetypes given in the play; Walter, George Murchison, and Asagai, and they are all similar in the fact that they are black men, but differ in how they believe black men should act, especially when it comes to family and heritage.

To understand literature is to not only understand human nature, but to also understand how the surrounding conditions affect humans. It is often the situation that people are placed in which drives their actions. Similarly, the Marxist approach to studying literature focuses on how certain economic conditions can affect character’s values and actions. In addition, Marxism teaches that wealth is a critical part of society, as without it many opportunities are no longer present. For example, an individual with wealth can go through life leisurely, while a person without it is subject to greater hardships. In the play A Raisin in the Sun by Lorraine Hansberry, the struggle due to economic conditions is evident, as the dreams and aspirations of the Younger family become deferred due to their struggles with poverty. The economic conditions of the Younger family not only lead to the deferral of their dreams, but also to the neglect of their moral values as they begin to see wealth as a necessity.

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.

Lorraine Hansberry’s play, A Raisin in the Sun, depicts the lives of the Younger family, an African American family living in the Southside of Chicago during the 1950s. The play takes place in their cramped apartment offering the reader insight into the arguments, discussions, and conversations that take place between the characters. In one scene, Hansberry specifically offers the reader a conversation between Asagai, an influential companion, and Beneatha to show us how disparate the Younger siblings, Beneatha and Walter, are. As Asagai looks at Beneatha, he sees “what the New World has finally wrought.” Similarly, Beneatha takes a look at Walter and says, “Yes, just look at what the New World hath finally wrought” with an enraged

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.

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.

Every person who comes to America has a common motive, with underlying details causing their motives to differ. Some come to America with the hope of freedom from the difficult lives they face in their home countries, while others will arrive because of the various opportunities for success that America has to offer. But most of all, many believe the country can give them the chance to find who they are and figure out what their goals are their new life. Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun surrounds a black family in the southside of Chicago, known as the Younger’s. The play gives insight on the life of the family, and the many difficulties they face as each family member tries to achieve their American Dream. Beneatha Younger, the daughter

    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.

We often forget our moral development in life. It tends to lead us to a sense of confusion, and anger. But what we should find most valuable in ourselves, is our conscious that sends us a right or wrong feeling in our integrity. In the play A Raisin In The Sun, by Lorraine Hansberry, she precisely executes the true meaning of self reconciliation within the characters in their scenes. The development among each character helps them understand what they need in life; opposed to what they did. The growth they signify adds to the plot of each character in their finest form.

Popular media allow for the general public to be able to properly digest the matters of racial prejudice that are prevalent in our society. There are various ways that racial prejudices are exposed through actions and the structures in society that stems from the perceptions that race is this biological hierarchical supremacy. Additionally, these race classifications that are made by those in power has structured society in a way that puts some in advantage and many at a disadvantage that has continued into modern society. These are disadvantages are revealed through such things as microagressions and socioeconomic structures that favored and continues to favor the “dominant” classes. These matters can be best expressed through personal experiences relating to experienced prejudice, such as Lorraine Hansberry conveying artistically her experience with racial housing issues in Chicago. In her play, The Raisin in the Sun, Hansberry reveals through the Younger family, such issues as community acceptance, lost dreams, and racial discrimination on an economic level. Bruce Norris’s play, Clybourne Park, considers these issues as well as he expands on Hansberry’s world in his personal adaptation of The Raisin in the Sun’s primary plot point. Through experiences shared in the Younger’s future home, Norris explores privilege, systematic racism, white flight, community, and gentrification. Through reference and analysis of Raisin in the Sun and then of Clybourne Park, followed by

A Raisin in the Sun is play written about a family in the 1950’s, and the focus of the play is how racism affects that family. The family in the play tries to buy a house in a white neighborhood, and they have to deal with discriminatory housing practices and the threat of racial violence. A Raisin in the Sun is relevant today because a lot of the insights it makes about racism are still debated over today. One of the issues it tackles is racial violence. In the play, the family deals with the threat of racial violence from people who don’t want them to move into their new house. Today, many feel that racial violence is being done by the police. The story also deals with the family’s struggles to buy a house and the abuse they face for

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.