Lorraine Hansberry's A Raisin In The Sun

(page 45-46)” In the first act alone, the audience is shown the great disparities between the American dream for a white man and the American dream for people of color. However, now with this insurance money from Big Walter’s death, there is a chance of someone their dream, the problem that the Younger’s face is which someone should get to use the money. Beneatha needs it for college to become a doctor, Walter needs it to invest in a liquor store so he can finally “be somebody.” But Mama wants to use that money to buy a house. She wants to leave their current rented apartment and she wants a nice house in the suburbs where she could have a garden and “with a yard where Travis could play in the summer. (page 44)” Mama believes that a change of scenery is what the family needs and that it will bring them back together. These three characters have the most conflicting wants for the

In the play, Mama, makes the decision to move into a new house, with this choice Mama puts her family in a tough situation. This benefits the family in several ways such as boosting their moral, and allowing them to live in a more pleasant area. As Mama told Walter, “ Walter Lee- it makes a difference in a man when he can walk on floors that belong to him” (2.1.92). One huge factor of moving to a better area, if confidence. With this boost of a better house, it could make Walter and the rest of his family work harder, allowing them to make more money. However, there have been recent bombings on colored houses in white neighborhoods. As Johnson mentioned “you mean you ain’t read ‘bout them colored people that was bombed out of their place out there?”

Economic and societal poverty are the key forms of poverty highlighted in the three-act play, A Raisin in the Sun. Lorraine Hansberry, the playwright, discusses the hardships of African-Americans attempting to emerge in society in the 1950’s. The play is staged in ways where the audience can grasp the trifles of an African-American family continuously experiencing setbacks whilst attempting to achieve their notion of the “American Dream”. To Walter Lee Younger, his idea of the “American Dream” is that anything is possible for those who have money. Unfortunately, there is a minor problem: Walter Lee Younger is a working-class African-American man who struggles to make ends meet in the Southside of Chicago, Illinois. The family undergoes

Many people go through different moralities in there life some that they believe can change their life for the better but don’t know the consequences. This ties in with issues involving money. Many people believe that money is the way to happiness and do what they can to get money even if it means to hurt your loved ones. In the play “Raisin in the Sun” Walter Lee Younger is man that lives in South Side Chicago and at point in life that he’s in, he wants to do something in his life and make a difference for colored people. The way he believes he can accomplish that is by opening a bar to make money for his family while believing money is the only source of happiness. Walters ideal morality was to make sure he got his hands on the insurance money so he could open up the bar even if it meant his family would suffer when things went wrong.

Hansberry develops this particular issue by illustrating how important success is to the second generation of the Younger family, Walter and Beneatha. After a long heritage of slavery and servitude, the Younger siblings want to take advantage of this age of social reform and break from the binding traditions that have beset their race in the past. Mama illustrated this when she says, “Son – I come from five generations of people who was slaves and sharecroppers – but ain’t nobody in my family never let nobody pay ‘em no money that was a way of telling us we wasn’t fit to walk the earth. We ain’t never been that poor. We ain’t never been that – dead inside” (Hansberry, 143). They view the expected income of $10,000 in insurance money as a gateway to get what they each desire and achieve success. Walter Younger feels degraded and miserable in his job as a

It was a common fear among the African-Americans. The Younger Family knew that the discrimination would hold them back from their dreams and goals, but because they believe in prosperity and pride, that was the last thing on their mind. The “want” in their spirits, is what sets them at place of tranquility and hope. “In fact, here’s another fifty cents… buy yourself some fruit today - or take a taxicab to school or something! (1.1.1840) Walter is letting his son know that there is no problem when it comes to their economic status. One of the difficulties that the adults faced was their self-righteousness. The discrimination was really enabled when it came to anything in their life. Whether it be buying certain houses, jobs, or even sitting in a restaurant, it was something so common; they learned that it is far more important for their child to know how to live with no fear and worrisome in life. When it came to Walter, he knew that keeping the innocence in Travis’ life was the right thing to do, where for Ruth she was far more upright. The self-doubt they displayed was becoming a burden in their lives, but that transformation and growth is what helped them come to a better understanding of themselves. The Younger Family’s moral development would be their sense of pride, and Mama’s destiny was to continue that pride. Mama’s development within herself had grown to great measures, but when it came to her

This being a common problem in the 1950s that most African Americans had deal with, Lorraine Hansberry does a very well job demonstrating a kind of social racism a black family could face. As the Younger begin to fulfill the dream to move into their new home, they are met with challenges from the Clybourne Park Improvement Association, an all-white neighborhood. The neighborhood decides to send the Mr. Lindner over to try to convince the Youngers that they should not move into the new home. The family is tempted by the offer of the bribe not to move in the all-white neighborhood. However the family decides to stick together and fight racism by using the core values of the family.

Segregation was still much present in the 1960s and America lived separated full of racism and, some of the people in that time value money more than morality as a result they thought that was the only way someone could live happily. Mama faced many adversities throughout the play due to the great sum of money she received and she wanted to use it for something that would help everyone in her family. Mama loves her family and shows she does not care about money and only cares about her family, showing she has moral since she wants to use the money for something that would be useful for her family, like a house, she also uses some of the money to pay for beneatha's med school and for walters liquor store, she wanted to make her children's dreams come true.

She is the oldest and wisest member of the family, and her word is respected. Mama puts family above herself, contrasting from Beneatha’s willingness to temporarily use her family to put her through school. When Mama received the life insurance check from her deceased husband, she used the money to buy a new house. She sensed that the family was restless and breaking, and she used her money to change the scenery for them and give them a place to live that they could be proud of. She makes sure to take care of her family, contributing what everyone else did, and taking less; working a job and also taking care of everyone at home. Mama has old fashioned, traditional beliefs, and she clashes with the others at certain moments in order to hold her ground and traditions. When Beneatha says she isn’t religious, Mama slaps her and makes her say, “In my mother’s house there is still God.”(page 54) She makes sure to enforce her beliefs in her house, also making it clear how she feels about Ruth wanting an abortion. Mama is the leader of the household, and as such she is the only one who is willing to put trust in Walter in order to empower him. After she bought the house, she gave the remainder of the money to him, trusting him to make a heavy decision. Even after he hurt her by wasting the money, she still gave him the power of the head of the family to make the final decision on

Back then, even if they weren’t slaves anymore, African Americans still undergo the cruelty of racism. The Clybourne Park neighborhood, in which Mama had bought the house in, sent a representative from their neighborhood society to try and convince the Youngers to not move in. Mr.Lindner offered money to them to buy this property off of them. During this, the money that Mama gave to Walter to start up his business and to help Beneatha’s Medical school fees had been stolen.

One of the main plot points within the play is Mama’s purchase of a home in a predominately white neighborhood. In fact

In the play, A Raisin in the Sun by Lorraine Hansberry, money plays an essential role in character development. Raisin is set in the South Side of Chicago, in the late 1950s. The 1950s in the midwest were characterized by segregation, racism and poverty. The play follows the lives of a poor, urban, African-American family, the Younger’s, during this period of heightened racial discrimination in the United States. The Younger family is a single parent family, as the story begins after the death of the patriarch of the family.

While Mama is always supportive about her family’s dreams, she never understood the underlying cause of why her family members dreamed of wealth and materialistic objects. Growing up, all she had to worry about was being re-enslaved and lynching. Although Mama had dreams growing up, all of them seemed absolutely obscured considering her circumstances. In the play she recalls, “What you ain't never understood is that I ain't got nothing, don't own nothing, ain't never really wanted nothing that wasn't for you. There ain't nothing as precious to me...

Mr. Lindner is sent by his community to convince the family not to move into the neighborhood. He even goes as far as to offer to buy back the house at twice the cost. Mr. Lindner refers to the Youngers’ as “you people” several times and mentions “some of the instances that have happened in various parts of the city when colored people have moved into certain areas” (1984-1986). Beneatha claims that Mr. Lindner is talking “Brother Hood” and saying “how everybody ought to learn how to sit down and hate each other with good Christian fellowship” (1987). If a white family had bought the house and were meeting with Mr. Lindner for the first time, his choice of words and the tone of the evening would have been very different because blacks were not socially accepted by society during this era. Mr. Lindner tells Walter specifically that he is not being racist when he says “I want you to believe me when I tell you that race prejudice simply does not enter into it” and “That our Negro families are happier when they live in their own communities”, which sounds very racist (1986). Some would say that the way the character is talking is just the way that people talked in the 1950s, and others might say that Mr. Lindner is making racial comments.

In A Raisin in the Sun, by Lorraine Hansberry, the Younger family is trying to achieve the American Dream, which is “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. They inherit ten thousand dollars because Mama’s husband died. Mama is the matriarch of the Younger family. Each family member has their own idea about how to use this money to fulfill their dreams, and the play uses the decisions of the family members and other characters to show the reader that people’s actions are not always motivated by what they appear to be. Mama wants to use the money to buy a house in a white neighborhood, because she thinks it is a better environment for her family than their current living conditions and will benefit her family. Although there are a number of people in A Raisin in the Sun who appear too want to help the Younger family, Mama shows through her decision to buy the house that she is the only person that is looking out for the best interests of her family.