Essay Lorraine Hansberry's A Raisin In The Sun

Dreams don’t always work out the way you want them to. Beneatha, in A Raisin in the Sun, had many big dreams, not all easily achievable. Many of them, also never came true for her, and then some of them did. Beneatha’s character traits explain dreams, and how sometimes they don't come true. Beneatha's independence, indecisiveness, and modern views of society all help describe what Lorraine Hansberry is trying to make readers think about while reading A Raisin in the Sun.

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.

Exposition The characters are introduced by Hansberry. It is the 1950’s in a tiny apartment in Southside Chicago. The Younger family has just suffered the loss of Walter’s dad, with a $10,000 inheritance check supposedly to arrive in the near future. Upon hearing about the check, Walter, the protagonist, hopes to be able to take the money to invest in a liquor store. His sister, Beneatha hopes to be able to use it to attend medical school and Mama

Lorraine Hansberry, the author of “A Raisin in The Sun”, was born in Chicago, Illinois. Hansberry was the youngest of four children. Her father Carl Augustus Hansberry was a prominent real estate broker and her mother Louise Perry was a stay home mother. She grew up on the south side of Chicago in the Woodlawn neighborhood. Later the family moved into an all-white neighborhood, where they experienced racial discrimination. Hansberry attended a predominantly white public school while her parents fought against segregation. In 1940 Hansberry’s father engaged in a Supreme Court case of Hansberry v. Lee which was a legal battle against a racially restrictive covenant that attempted to prohibit African-American families from buying homes in the area. As a result in Supreme Court case of Hansberry v. Lee it made the family subject to the hellishly hostile in their predominantly white neighborhood.

A Raisin in the Sun by Lorraine Hansberry is a play that displays housing discrimination in Chicago during the 1950s. Housing discrimination was partially an effect of the Great Migration. This was an event during the 1950s that resulted in about six million African Americans “migrating” from the south to the north, Midwest, and west regions of the United States. This caused the population of black people in major northern cities to increase rapidly. They are then only able to live in certain neighborhoods, which keeps their communities segregated.

A dream deferred is a dream put off to another time, much like this essay. But unlike dreams sometimes, this essay will get fulfilled and done with. Each character from A Raisin in the Sun had a deferred dream, even little Travis although his dream was not directly stated.

In Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun, Beneatha Younger is the highly motivated, opinionated daughter of Lena Younger. As a black woman attending college with intentions of becoming a doctor, she is a trailblazer character whose goals stand out among the rest. With such independent desires and arduous goals to meet, Beneatha does not dwell on her romantic life. Her focus lies in her future, not the boys who court her. Beneatha is more than willing to consider the possibility of being single her entire life, seemingly unbothered when she poses the idea (Hansberry, 739). Beneatha believes in her ability to succeed in medical school because of her positive attitude, analytical opinions and wholesome values. Hansberry writes Beneatha as

In the play, A Raisin in the Sun, by Lorraine Hansberry, one of the most important themes is the American Dream. Many of the characters in this play have hopes and aspirations; they all strive towards their goals throughout the play. However, many of the characters in the play have different dreams that clash with each other. Problems seem to arise when different people’s dreams conflict with one another; such as Walter’s versus Bennie’s, George’s versus Asagai’s, and the Clybourne Park versus the Younger’s.

Suddenly, things changed, and Walter and his family came into quite a bit of money. Walter’s mama got a check for ten thousand dollars from her husbands life insurance after he passed away, which was a lot of money in that period of time. A nice house or a liquor store could easily be bought with half of the money from the check. Since the check was actually written out to mama, the money was all technically hers, so all that she wanted to do with it was buy her new house for her family, but stubborn Walter, he wanted his liquor store, and would stop at nothing to get it. When he finally realized that his mama was never going to give him the money to get the liquor store, he took it upon himself to get it himself. He eventually stole a portion of his mama’s money to get the store, but he was taken for a fool when the other person that he was making a deal with, stole all of his money. Now he had nothing, and mama had only some of her money.

   “Why do some people persist despite insurmountable obstacles, while others give up quickly or never bother to try” (Gunton 118)? A Raisin in the Sun, a play by Lorraine Hansberry, is a commentary on life and our struggle to comprehend and control it. The last scene in the play between Asagai and Beneatha contrasts two contemporary views on why we keep on trying to change the future, and reaches the conclusion that, far from being a means to an end, the real meaning of life is the struggle. Whether we succeed or not, our lives are purposeful only if we have tried to make the world a better place for ourselves and others- only, in other words, if we follow our dreams.

Lorraine Hansberry’s novel, A Raisin in the Sun, revolves around a middle-class African-American family, struggling during World War II. By reading about the Younger’s true to life experiences, one learns many important life lessons. One of the aforementioned would be that a person should always put family’s needs before their own. There are many examples of this throughout the novel. Just a few of these would be the example of Ruth and her unborn baby, Walter regaining the respect of his family, and Mama and her unselfish ways.

Lorraine Hansberry, the author of the play A Raisin in the Sun, uses the characters’ dreams to expose the nightmares of racism.  Each character wants to escape the “ghetto life on the South Side of Chicago” (Brubaker).  The Youngers are an African-American family living in Chicago during the 1950’s.  The play focuses on their dreams for a better future.  The play begins with the family waiting on a $10,000 life insurance check, as Walter senior has recently died.  Walter senior’s wife, Lena (Mama), her two adult children, Walter and Beneatha, Walter’s wife Ruth, and their son, Travis, all live together in a two-bedroom apartment.  The main characters has different dreams of what success means to them and how best to use the inheritance money; they know that the money is the key to unlocking a better life.  Mama, Walter, and Beneatha each pursue their own vision of the “American Dream”, but they all meet the same challenge of racism in the 1950’s.

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, the playwright Lorraine Hansberry depicts the life of an impoverished African American family living on the south side of Chicago. The Youngers, living in a small apartment and having dreams larger than the world in which the live, often use verbal abuse as a way to vent their problems. Many times, this verbal abuse leads to unnecessary conflict within the family. The most frequently depicted conflict is that between Walter and his sister Beneatha. Walter wants nothing more than to be a wealthy entrepreneur that can provide for his family, while Beneatha plans to go to medical school and become a doctor. Both characters are opposed to the others’ dreams. This