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Theme Of Conflict In A Raisin In The Sun

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Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun focuses on a low class African American family living in south side Chicago in the late 1950s. The Youngers family were a poor working class family facing racial prejudice and struggling financially. This would have to be the overall conflict through-out the entire play, but one semi-major conflict was what Lena would do with her husband’s insurance money. With the Youngers being such a poor family, there were many different ideas of what could have been done with the money. There were many sub-conflicts through the play as well, one being Ruth’s pregnancy. Ruth fainted in the apartment one day and had come to find out she was pregnant. Instead of Ruth going to a doctor, she had went to an abortionist instead. Lena suspects that Ruth has been considering an abortion instead and tries to get Walter Lee to comfort and be there for Ruth, his wife. Walter Lee does not pay Ruth nor her pregnancy any attention and instead leaves the apartment. Lena, along with Beneatha was so concerned on where another baby would sleep in the already crowded apartment, that Lena went to resolve the major conflict of how the insurance money would be spent. She went and put a down payment on a new house in a white neighborhood, Clybourne Park, for her family. Along with Ruth’s pregnancy, other sub conflicts had stirred, such as Walter Lee’s determination in trying to convince Lena to let him invest the insurance money in a liquor store. Lena is a Christian

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