Essay Question: How is the title of the two plays, A Raisin in the Sun by Lorraine Hansberry and the Piano Lesson by significant? Compare the interpretation of the title and the actual moral to the play.
The Significance of a Title
The title of stories, poems, or plays may be significant in many ways. It may be a clue to the moral of the story or even a symbol of something very important in the text. In the play the Piano Lesson, you can clearly grab the meaning from the word lesson; a lesson given by a teacher to play an instrument such as a piano in this case. But then again, it can go the other way around; the lesson which the piano teaches. In this play, the piano is a symbol which causes problems and pleasure. The actual meaning is the piano teaching a lesson. The piano holds the history and shows the past suffering of the Charles family. In the play, A Raisin in the Sun, an actual meaning cannot be derived so easily like the Piano Lesson. When I first compared the title and it’s moral considering the story’s plot, I thought the money symbolized the check they were planning on receiving and the raisin symbolizing the Youngers who seems to be little just like a raisin since they were poor and didn’t have much. Then when I when I read the poem A dream Deferred by Langston Hughes, I realized that the raisin served as the dreams certain characters in the play having and whether it would have a good or bad outcome. Will their dream work and prosper or will it start slow and go downhill? The title shows the struggles of the Younger family and how each individual dreams were different and how it developed. In the Piano Lesson, there was a family named the Sutters who bought the Charles family as slaves. Mr. Sutter could no...
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...t finally went away. Boy Willie finally realized the value of the piano and decided to leave.
In A Raisin in the Sun, there is a poor family named the Youngers who struggle everyday of their lives. It is around the time where slavery is over but very racial. Luck comes along when Mama Lena receives a ten thousand dollar life insurance check from her husbands death. At Mama Lena’s residence there is her daughter Beneatha and son Walter. They both have their own dreams and plans on what to do with the money. Waltes who resides at Mama Lena with his wife and son plans to invest in a liquor store. On the other hand, Lena’s daughter Beneatha plans to invest the money in medical school which she is estatic to attend after finishing her college years. Mama Lena also has plans for the money which is to invest in a house for her family and send Beneatha to medical school.
In Edmond Rostand’s comedic and romantic drama, Cyrano de Bergerac, Cyrano and De Guiche strong and fiery personalities conflict throughout the novel. Although Cyrano and De Guiche are enemies they feel and want mostly the same things. Cyrano and De Guiche are brought together not only by their love of the same girl, but also by their position in the military and their desire to protect their honor; despite the many conflicts this brings, they are able in the end to respect each other.
A Raisin in the Sun Final Essay The play A Raisin in the Sun by Lorraine Hansberry, takes place in the late 1940s, a time of much racial and gender discrimination. The Youngers, an extended, financially struggling african american family, are living in a small apartment together. At a certain point in the play, Lena, the grandmother and matriarch of the family, receives a check for $10,000 after her husband passes away. Each person in the family has a different dream of using the money, and antagonism builds between the various family members.
In A Raisin In the Sun Lorraine Hansberry uses everyday objects-a plant, money, and a home to symbolize a family's struggle to deal with racism and oppression in their everyday lives, as well as to exemplify their dreams. She begins with a vivid description of the family's weary, small, and dark apartment in Chicago's ghetto Southside during the 1950s. The Youngers are an indigent African-American family who has few choices in their white society. Each individual of the Younger family has a separate dream-Beneatha wants to become a doctor, Walter wants to open a liquor store, and Ruth and Mama want a new and better home. The Youngers struggle to accomplish these dreams throughout the play, and a major aspect of their happiness and depression is directly linked to their achievement, or failure to achieve their dreams.
A Raisin in the Sun is written by a famous African- American play write, Lorraine Hansberry, in 1959. It was a first play written by a black woman and directed by a black man, Lloyd Richards, on Broadway in New York. The story of A Raisin in the Sun is based on Lorraine Hansberry’s own early life experiences, from which she and her whole family had to suffer, in Chicago. Hansberry’s father, Carol Hansberry, also fought a legal battle against a racial restrictive covenant that attempted to stop African- American families from moving in to white neighborhoods. He also made the history by moving his family to the white section of Chicago’s Hyde Park neighborhood in 1938. The struggle of Lorraine Hansberry’s family inspired her to write the play. The title of the play comes from Langston Hughes’s poem which compares a dream deferred too long to a raisin rotting in the sun. A Raisin in the Sun deals with the fact that family’s and individual’s dreams and inspirations for a better life are not confined to their race, but can be identified with by people with all back grounds.
The award winning play “A Raisin in the Sun” written by Lorraine Hansberry focuses on characters that are challenged by the reality of their dreams and the harsh society around them. Walter Lee Younger, a working man with a small family, is someone who has high hopes for his future, but during the book, due to many events, he repeatedly had doubts about the outcome of his goals. As the play progresses, Walter’s dream plays a large role in his character development because he starts off as a man who felt as if all of his family members neglected his dreams, and transitioned into a person who is willing to do whatever it takes for his family’s dreams to flourish, instead of purely his own.
Lorraine Hansberry, in her play A Raisin in the Sun, tells the story of the Youngers, a poverty-stricken family of five. The author uses a large sum of inherited life insurance money to symbolize the downfall of two of the characters, Beneatha and Walter, due to their dreams.
A Raisin in the Sun by Lorraine Hansberry is a play about a struggling African American family who lives in the slums of Chicago. The main family, the Youngers, is in a financial hole and each person in the family has a dream. However, it will take a large amount of money for each individual to complete their dream. The three main dreamers of the play would be Walter Lee (the main character), Beneatha (Walter’s sister), and Mama (Walter’s mother). Walter’s dream is to start a liquor business, Mama’s dream is to buy a house for her family to live in, and Beneatha’s dream is to go into medical school and become a doctor. In the story, the most important dream would have to be Beneatha’s dream. She wants to become a doctor and completing her dream could potentially have an enormous impact on women, African Americans, and people of all kinds.
In life there are always going to be ups and downs, good and bad times, because families go through extensive amounts of arguments. Within the play A Raisin in the Sun, written by Lorraine Hansberry, there are a few complications that the Younger family face. Moreover, the main complications occur between Lena Younger (Mama) and Walter Lee Younger (the son of Mama). Throughout the play, the biggest complication they face is how to spend Walter Lee Senior’s life insurance money. The Younger family goes through several challenging times; however, the family shows that no matter what, everyone should stick together.
One choice can affect the outcome of many other people. During the 1950’s opportunities took place all over America. In Hansberry’s play A Raisin in the Sun on the Southside of Chicago, Walter Younger makes one decision that affects his family and specifically his sister Beneatha. Walter and Beneatha both have dreams in the play that are deferred.
A Raisin in the Sun is a play written by Lorraine Hansberry. The primary focus of the play is the American Dream. The American Dream is one’s conception of a better life. Each of the main characters in the play has their own idea of what they consider to be a better life. A Raisin in the Sun emphasizes the importance of dreams regardless of the various oppressive struggles of life.
A Raisin in the Sun is a play telling the story of an African-American tragedy. The play is about the Younger family near the end of the 1950s. The Younger family lives in the ghetto and is at a crossroads after the father’s death. Mother Lena Younger and her grown up children Walter Lee and Beneatha share a cramped apartment in a poor district of Chicago, where she and Walter Lee's wife Ruth and son Travis barely fit together inside. Lena's husband, the family's father, died and his life insurance brings the family $10,000.
A Raisin in the Sun by Lorraine Hansberry is a play about the Younger family, a black family trying to achieve their goals, and help their family financially. Walter’s dream is to open a liquor store, Mama’s dream is to buy a house, and Beneatha’s dream is to become a doctor. While some may argue that Walter’s dream may provide an immediate and steady income, statistics say that 60% of local businesses fail within the first 18 months (Engel n.p.). Some may also argue that Mama’s dream is more important; however, if they buy a house, and don’t have enough money to pay the bills, the Younger family would be back to where they were before. Beneatha's dream of becoming a doctor would benefit her family in the long run, promote the idea of women becoming doctors, and help to end racial differences.
Have you ever found money coming between you and your family and disrupting love and life? Money can destroy families and change them for the worse. In the Raisin in the Sun, the author Lorraine Hansberry, uses events of her life to relate and explain how the Younger family, of Chicago's South side, struggles and improves throughout the book. One main cause for their family's problems is because of money and how it causes anger to control the family. The play deals with situations in which the family is dealing with unhappiness from money. Walter, the man of the house in the Younger family, tries impressing Travis, his son, too much with money instead of teaching him the more important lessons of life. Walter also dreams to invest in a liquor store and make a lot of money and becomes overwhelmed and badly caught up in his dream. Lastly, the Younger family is much too dependent on the check their Mama is receiving. The family has lost the fact that their mama tries to tell them, before, freedom was life but now money seems to have the controlling factor in life. When money becomes an obsession for a family, problems occur.
A Raisin in the Sun follows the events of an African-American family living in Chicago during the 50’s. It becomes apparent from the first scene that the family has financial issues. Walter who is discontent with his living situation, believes that an insurance check that his mother will be receiving will solve all of the families problems and allow for a better life. Mama uses a fraction of the check to purchase a house in a all white neighborhood. A representative of the Clybourne Park Improvement Association comes to visit the Youngers and offers to buy back their house at a financial gain and insists that Clybourne is no place for an African-American family. Meanwhile, Walter had already lost the rest of the insurance money ($6500) to his friend Willy Harris who runs away with the money leaving Walter and his family at a loss. This is particularly devastating because the money represents Mama’s husbands entire life of hard work as a laborer. In the end of this story, the Youngers are genuinely more happy and optimistic that they can live more fulfilling lives. The Youngers problem is one that exists in modern day families of the United States. Money management is a physiological issue between spouses and families.