Lorraine Hansberry's A Raisin In The Sun

Lorraine Hansberry was a famous African American playwright. Her play Raisin in the Sun takes places during the 1960’s on the southside of Chicago. The play was inspired by Langston Hughes poem “Dream Deferred.” The play follows the Younger family as they try to make their dreams come true. In her play, Raisin in the Sun, Hansberry uses Walter, Beneatha and Mama to show the negative consequences that occur when you defer your dreams.

In Lorraine Hansberry’s play, A Raisin in the Sun, she depicts the struggles of an African American family striving to overcome poverty and make a better life for themselves in the harsh reality of a white-dominated world. Walter, Beneatha, and Lena Younger all exhibit extravagant dreams for a better future, yet through one reckless action, all of their dreams become unattainable. Walter’s lust for money and desire for respect and authority causes him to throw away sixty-five hundred dollars, dissolve his family’s dreams for a better future, and waste the prospect of financial stability his father spent his life working for.

When people think American a few words that come to mind is freedom, opportunity, and justice, these things are what make the American dream that many strive for. In the play, Raisin in the sun, by Lorraine Hansberry, Invisible Life by Lynn Harris, and Quicksand by Nella Larson are all able to illustrate what the American dream looks like. These novels show how the dream is something different for everyone, but it also shows how hard it is to achieve especially for the black class.

Do you believe it's okay to be different? In the book Raisin In the Sun by Lorraine Hansberry, Beneatha searches her identity throughout the play. She also wants to be different from her family. How? Beneatha tries everything in her power not to give up on her dream of becoming a doctor. Throughout this play, it shows how this African American family struggles to become successful while going through segregation and racism. Beneatha doesn’t let none of this stop her, difficult situations happen and she has to still figures out who she is. In this play you’ll see how independent Beneatha is, she doesn’t believe in God but she believes in herself and she doesn't want to follow her culture.

Lorraine Hansberry is a play writer and the first female writer to have a play performed on broadway. Langston hughes is an american poet, playwright, and social activist. During the Harlem renaissance, Hansberry and Hughes met and Hughes left a deep influence on Hansberry and this motivated her to keep writing. At this time Hansberry wrote a Raisin In the Sun, which was based on the poem, “ A Dream Deferred.” This play was a huge success and was the youngest American playwright at age 29.

Inequality and racism are issues that have plagued our society since its beginning. From that point forward there has been discrimination and animosity towards a whole race of people. The play A Raisin in the Sun by Lorraine Hansberry explores the consequences of this systematic oppression on the family dynamic. Reading the novel was an edifying experience due to its well-developed plot, compelling characters, and relatability.

In the play A Raisin in the Sun by Lorraine Hansberry, family arises as a significant topic throughout the entire book. All of the characters dealt with issues involving family somehow, but I think that Walter and Mama lived up to the idea of putting family first the best. They believed that the family is the most important relationship in most people’s lives because in the end, Walter did whatever he could to make everything better, and Mama always wanted to do what was best for the family.

A dream is defined as an aspiration that somebody has or hopes to achieve. Throughout A Raisin in the Sun by Lorraine Hansberry, the characters try to attain their dreams but this does not always work out, yet they still live on and create new dreams to work towards. At the beginning of the play, Beneatha aspired to be a doctor in America after she completed a college degree. Walter dreamt of owning a liquor store to earn money, but did not care much about his family's opinions. Mama originally just wanted to own a new house since she had never felt as if she had a big house of her own. She and her husband had always wanted a better home, and she thought it was the perfect opportunity to buy one because the

A Raisin in The Sun, a drama by Lorraine Hansberry was produced on stage in 1959. The drama describes an black family, in the 1950’s on the Southside of Chicago, who have complications with each other, but pull through it successfully. The family consists of, Mama, the grandma, who’s name is Lena, Ruth, the mother, Walter Lee, the father, Beneath, the daughter of Mama, sister of Walter, and aunt of Travis; and Travis, the son of Walter Lee and Ruth Younger. Over the courses of the play, Beneatha and Mama, and Mama and Walter experience conflict, yet by the end of the play the family has been able to cross their differences and are able to support one another in a common cause, which is to pass by racial judgement.

A Raisin in the Sun by Lorraine Hansberry portrays the life of the Youngers, a lower economic class, African American family living in a 2 bed no bath apartment in the 1950s. Hansberry reveals the emotional turbulence of African Americans in this era revolved around dried up dreams and lack of money. The Younger family consists of Mama, the head of the house, Walter Lee, Ruth, Beneatha, and Travis. The American play starts with a tired family in a tired apartment and ends with a revived family in a lively house; between the two, the journey, is an emotional roller coaster of leadership decisions, money, one’s maturing, morality, priorities, and most of all dreams dependent on an insurance check left from Walter Lee Sr. Langston Hughes’ poem,

A Raisin In The Sun, a play by Lorraine Hansberry. In this play, the Youngers were a poor African.American family living on the South side of Chicago. An opportunity to escape from poverty comes when the family receives a $10,000 life insurance check that the Mama gets after her husband's death. Each of the family members has their own dream. Mama wants to have a new house with a garden, but instead she lives in an apartment with one window and a little plant. Walter wants to help the family by opening the liquor store, Ruth just wants the best for her new family, and Beneatha wants to finish school to become a doctor. When mama invests the money on a new house and not

Walter is good at what he does. He thinks of all the different ways people can commit insurance fraud so when those cases do come to him he can catch them. When he met Phyllis he went in hopes of renewing the policy not knowing the wife with her killer looks would be the one he’d meet. Phyllis began to talk to Walter asking how she could be of help and than saying the husband has been thinking of going with the competitor. Being the good at his business, Walter knew there was more to it than just the normal insurance conversation. Wanting to gain power within each other has both characters testing the waters within each other. Not only did Walter notice the conversation was going elsewhere but also the body of Phyllis that he says can “make

A Raisin in the Sun: The Life Changing Book “What happens to a dream deferred? Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun? Or fester like a sore- and then run?”

According to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, feminism is defined as “the theory of the political, economic, and social equality of the sexes” (“feminism” def. 1). In the American drama, A Raisin in the Sun, Beneatha, a young college student aspiring to be a doctor, embodies the characteristics of feminism through her defiance of conventional gender roles. Throughout the course of the text, Beneatha’s family, suitors, and society alike attempt to thrust subordinance upon her, and encourage her to accept her role as a woman in America. Nonetheless, Beneatha rejects this stereotype and continually challenges misogyny. Thus, in A Raisin in the Sun, Lorraine Hansberry employs the character of Beneatha as a feminist figure in order to criticize the unjust role of women in the

Origins A raisin in the sun is Lorraine Hansberry's play about racism. It shows the struggles the black live every day. The play is a true story of her family who are black and want to live in a house at a neighborhood that was only inhabited by the white. Their white neighbors tried to offer them money to get out of the house but they refused to leave and insisted on staying in their house whatever this will coast.