Pride in Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun

     Everyone has dreams; everyone has goals they want to accomplish. Some know what it is instantly and some take time to realize what they want to do. But not everyone will achieve their dreams and some, because of sad circumstances lose their grip on their dream and fall into a state of disappointment. Langston Hughes poem relates to the dreams of Mama, Ruth, and Walter in Lorraine Hansberry’s play A Raisin in the Sun.

In Langston Hughes’ poem “Harlem,” he discusses the idea of unfulfilled dreams and their plausible outcomes using symbolism and imagery. He initially describes a “deferred” dream as a sun-dried raisin, depicting the dream originally as a fresh grape that now has dried up and “turned black” (Jemie 63). This idea provides Lorraine Hansberry’s play A Raisin in the Sun with its basic foundation, for it is a play about a house full of unfulfilled dreams. As the poem goes on, Hughes depicts the idea of a deferred dream as something rotten or gone bad. According to Onwuchekwa Jemie, this may be an allusion to the American Dream and its empty promises (Jemie 64).

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.

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.

Lorraine Hansberry’s play, A Raisin in the Sun features an African American family in the late 1950’s as they look forward to achieving their individual dreams in the era where racism and economic hardship among African Americans was the norm. While Hansberry doesn’t directly mention well-known events in the civil rights movement, she illustrates the realistic struggles an African American family would have faced during this time. In the introduction of the play, Robert Nemiroff illustrates several themes and issues that are addressed throughout Hansberry’s play. One of the subjects Nemiroff mentions is the “value systems of the black family”(Nemiroff, “Introduction,” 5-6). A main value that Hansberry illustrates throughout the play is the

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” (1959), she reveals the life of the Youngers family. In doing so, there surfaces a detrimental ideology that destroys the family financially and in their overall happiness. In Act II Scene I, Walter, the father figure of the family, says, “Why? You want to know why? 'Cause we all tied up in a race of people that don 't know how to do nothing but moan, pray and have babies!” (Hansberry 532). By way of explanation, the family and much of the African-American community for the 1960’s, is built upon a loose ideology that is a brutal cycle that infects the lives of those who inhabit the area; tired of all the commotion from the Caucasians who, to them, miraculously achieve a life of ruling and

Ambition is one of many key roles that take place in an individual's life. Many have the ambition to fulfill their dream of becoming of what they want to be. In A Raisin in the Sun, Lorraine Hansberry demonstrates a family like no other. Hansberry shows a very smart, young African American woman. Beneatha Younger, an ambitious, childish, educated young woman in her twenties. Beneatha attends college and will go to any length to reach her goal on becoming a doctor. Throughout the play, she faces many difficulties, but will not let anything or anyone in the way of becoming a doctor, which was not commonly seen in the late 1950s, due to the segregation still occurring throughout this time period. But, nothing will stop her from accomplishing

In the book “A Raisin in the Sun” by Lorraine Hansberry, there were characters whose dreams were stated, some of which were shattered by greed and misfortune and others which would eventually come to be true. The first dream that came about was Walter’s dream of one day owning and maintaining a liquor store. He would do anything to attempt to get his dream to come true, but his mama wanted anything but that to happen. His mama had a dream of her own though, she dreamed of one day owning her own house, where her whole family could stay comfortably. She dreamed this because in the apartment that she resided in was too small, and dumpy, as Ruth called it. Her grandson Travis had to sleep on the couch, and all

on all the effects of this racism, making sure none of it went unnoticed. Hansberry not only includes the struggle of the black community against the white, but also the divisions in the black community itself on culture and pride. She highlights the oppressions that go hand-in-hand with racism as well, the inherent classism and sexism. The social commentary in A Raisin in the Sun is extremely important and should not go unnoticed. There is so much depth added to the story and to the characters when the oppression

In conclusion, the play A Raisin in the Sun by. Lorraine Hansberry shows how hard it was for a poor black family in the 50’s. Through all the discrimination and segregation made it nearly impossible for an African American family to progress in life. The two most important characters Walter and Mama made the play what it

   “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.

	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