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A raisin in the sun essay introduction
A raisin in the sun essay introduction
A raisin in the sun essay introduction
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Loraine Hansberry presents :The Criticism, Racial Discrimination, and Heroism (Dignity), in “A Raisin in the Sun” In Lorraine Hansberry “A Raisin in the Sun”, the issues of racial discrimination, the debate of heroism, and criticism is vividly displayed. The play, which was written in the late 1950’s presents itself in a realistic discerning matter that implicates the racial division among the black family and white America. The play insinuates Walters’s heroism as well because of the black family’s struggle not to become discouraged in trying to obtain the world riches and still maintaining human dignity. When Hansberry wrote “A Raisin in the Sun”, many critics questioned the motive behind her play because it showed the America the world …show more content…
For example, in the text, it states, “You people must be aware of some of the incidents in various parts of the city when colored people have moved into certain areas”. (Hansberry 389). With this statement, it shows that even after segregation ended in 1948 by President Truman that whites were not willing to accept change. Mr. Linder is referring to the racial violence between blacks and whites until the 1960’s when blacks were considered colored. Overcrowded living conditions and not much room for change arise in Hansberry play, which shows the racial discrimination among the Youngers and the average American black family. The census of the 1940’s and the 1950’s showed that over 50,000 units were overcrowded and ruled unlivable. “At the moment, an overwhelming majority of people out there feels that people get along better when they share a common background”. (Hansberry 389). This is Mr. Linder’s way of trying to nonchalantly say that the majority of the people in his neighborhood don’t want to live near blacks. African Americans have faced multiple disadvantages during the 1950’s. They were discriminated from homes, public affairs, and restaurants. In Hansberry play, Mr. Linder stated, “Believe me that race prejudice simply doesn’t enter into”. (Hansberry 390). This is stating that they do not want to openly admit that race is the main conceptual …show more content…
Lorraine Hansberry herself clarified it when she spoke about the play. She states, “We cannot…very well succumb to monetary values and know the survival of certain aspects of man which must remain if we are looming larger than other creatures on the planet….Our people fight daily and magnificently for a more comfortable material base for their lives; they sacrifice for clean homes, decent foods, and personal and group dignity”. (Lester 417). Hansberry used Walter Lee to stand for that exact representation. Many African American men in the 1950’s and the 1960’s suffered pride and personal crisis issues because of the incapability to support and provide his family with the minimum of their basic needs. Walter Lee incriminated himself and his family for what he sees as his personal failure. (Lester 417). During the meeting with Mr. Linder the family, with the exclusion of Mama and Travis, stated that they were not interested in the offer of selling the house back to the welcoming committee of the neighborhood. This showed that the family stood firm for their moral values (dignity) that they share as a collective unit. Then something switches; Walter recklessly invested the family insurance money on a shaky liquor business startup. Feeling that all hope is lost and that his way of changing the family way of life is out of reach, he despairingly call Mr. Linder and told
Though there is realism within her work, the idealism is never far away at all. Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun allows one to see that progress is made through an idealistic view of the world and that hope is the root of many changes people search for in life. It was not uncommon for African Americans to have a realistic view of the world during the beginning of the 1900s. Segregation played a major role in shaping the century.
Hansberry, Lorraine. "A Raisin in the Sun." Ed. Nellie Y. McKay. The Norton Anthology of African American Literature. Comp. Henry Louis. Gates. 2nd ed. New York: W.W. Norton &, 2004. 1771-830. Print.
Kelly, Amanda. "The Art of Social Criticism: Lorraine Hansberry's A Raisin in the Sun." University of Michigan. University of Michigan, Winter 2003. Web. 16 Apr. 2014. .
In America, every citizen is guaranteed life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Although each person is given these rights, it is how each person uses them that defines how successful they will be in America. There are several obstacles that some Americans face on their pursuit of happiness. In this country’s past, Americans lived by a very specific set of beliefs that valued the importance of hard work, faith, and family. As time progressed and America began to evolve as a nation, this capitalistic society no longer devoted itself to family and faith but rather success, and the pursuit of prosperity. The shift from dependence on tradition towards a society that values success and how people struggle to b successful when society makes it difficult marks a common theme in Lorraine Hansberry’s play, A Raisin in the Sun. Two of the main characters in this story Lena Younger (Mama) and her son Walter Lee directly reflect the shift from tradition to a focus on success and capital and the struggles they face in regards to racism. Mama and Walter Lee’s contrasting values about the American dream and the way in which they pursue their own dreams while facing racism exemplifies the shift from valuing tradition like in previous generations in America, to valuing success and prosperity like in more current generations.
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.
Even though south side chicago had a low amount of hope, the characters of Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun, Walter, Beneatha, and Mama found a way to dream big. It led them to doing what they thought was right, eventually molding Walter into a greedy man during most of the play, Beneatha into an aspiring woman that demands respect, and Mama into an improvising woman who loves her
The conflict that involves Walter and Mama superficially concerns Mama's receiving an insurance check for ten thousand dollars, which she hasn't yet decided what to do with. Walter has hopes for using the money to invest in a liquor store, with the profits providing him and his family a better quality of life than what they have endured in the past. What really is at stake here, though, is more than money. Mama and Walter have different visions of what happiness is and what life is all about. For Mama, the best thing to do with the money is to make a down payment on a house. This house is to be situated within an all-white neighborhood, and represents assimilation. This is Mama's dream, and the dream ...
An Analysis of A Raisin In the Sun & nbsp; "A Raisin In The Sun" is a play written by an African-American playwright - Lorraine Hansberry. It was first produced in 1959. Lorraine Hansberry's work is about a black family in the Chicago South Side. the Second World War. The family consisted of Mama(Lena Younger), Walter.
Sum up, the social relationship between these people here, this old town Maycomb is complicated and pretty tense. This novel has taught us so much, thanks to Harper Lee – one of the greatest writers of all time. It has opened our eyes wider about racism at that time and compared it to nowadays it has become so much better. People are equally, no matter what skin color you are, what religion you have, or where you’re from, what you’re appearance looks like, we are all equal, and we are all the same – human. So instead of treating badly to one another we should all united and make the world a better place.
Lorraine Hansberry in her play, “Raisin in the Sun”, attempted to explain the feelings of the average African American Male in the 1940s. This persona, which is portrayed in the character Walter, had experienced a severe feeling of depression and hopelessness. In order to understand this source of grievance, one must relate back to the Great Migration and the dreams it promised and the reasons why many African Americans sought to move to the North. A desire to achieve freedom from racial injustices and poverty was the prime factor that encouraged Blacks to abandon the south. However, these dreams where soon crushed as African American noticed that Northern whites had still maintained unequal segregation and where as stumbling block to Black advancement. The consequences of a “dream deferred”, as Langston Hughes called it, was dependency on others, alcohol addiction, as well as dysfunctional families.
Lorraine Hansberry's A Raisin in the Sun is a play about segregation, triumph, and coping with personal tragedy. Set in Southside Chicago, A Raisin in the Sun focuses on the individual dreams of the Younger family and their personal achievement. The Younger's are an African American family besieged by poverty, personal desires, and the ultimate struggle against the hateful ugliness of racism. Lena Younger, Mama, is the protagonist of the story and the eldest Younger. She dreams of many freedoms, freedom to garden, freedom to raise a societal-viewed equal family, and freedom to live liberated of segregation. Next in succession is Beneatha Younger, Mama's daughter, assimilationist, and one who dreams of aiding people by breaking down barriers to become an African American female doctor. Lastly, is Walter Lee Younger, son of Mama and husband of Ruth. Walter dreams of economic prosperity and desires to become a flourishing businessman. Over the course of Walter's life many things contributed to his desire to become a businessman. First and foremost, Walter's father had a philosophy that no man should have to do labor for another man. Being that Walter Lee was a chauffeur, Big Walter?s philosophy is completely contradicted. Also, in Walter?s past, he had the opportunity to go into the Laundromat business which he chose against. In the long run, he saw this choice was fiscally irresponsible this choice was. In Lorraine Hansberry's A Raisin in the Sun, Walter Lee's dreams, which are his sole focus, lead to impaired judgement and a means to mend his shattered life.
To start off, Walter’s obsession with money is going to cost him a lot since it is the only thing he cares about. In the beginning, Walter starts out by only caring only about himself, but towards the end, he starts to care for everyone else as well. This shows that Walter is a selfish person. As Walter Lee states to Ruth, “Yeah. You see, this little liquor store we got in mind cost seventy-five thousand and we figured the initial investment on the place be ‘bout thirty thousand, see” is the dream that Walter Lee has for himself (Hansberry 33). Walter wants the money that the Younger family is getting from the insurance company to buy the liquor store. He thinks that the liquor store will make them rich and the family would not have to struggle anymore. At the end, Walter changes his whole point of view towards the insurance money. Walter declares to Mr....
A 14-year-old African American boy was kidnapped, tortured, and then shot in the head by two older white men. His body was wrapped in bob wire and found in the bank of the Tallahatchie River. It is said their “motive” to killing this young child was because he whistled at the wife of one of the two men. His body was then put on display by his mother for everyone to see the horrible things that were done to her son. (American Experience) For me, this is directly related to the Hansberry’s political philosophy. Emmett Till’s murder was a huge eye opener for this country. It showed the true hate a disgust that people actually held inside of them against the black race. People couldn’t ignore this just like they couldn’t ignore A Raisin in the Sun when it was released. The biggest factor of this was that his mom put his mutilated body on display for everyone to see and take in. The killing of her son, was almost as if he was everybody’s son in the black community. He was fourteen, and there were groups of young boys that were seventeen and eighteen becoming scared of their own lives. The death of Emmett Till although it was a tragedy, it made for a better tomorrow. Hansberry took the play and the book and made a statement that the world really couldn’t ignore. The things that were being done to black people strictly because of the color of their skin was upsetting. After the murder of Emmett Till, you had communities marching, getting their voice out there, and basically standing up for all their own rights. The Younger’s weren’t a family who dealt with poverty on a high scale. So they was looked at in a way where, here is an average black family who can’t succeed due to their environment not letting them. Hansberry to me is somebody who wants her statement to make an impact such as Emmett Till’s
Racial discrimination is defined as the act of treating a person/group differently than another, solely based on their racial background. The play as its self-received racial discrimination, because its author made history, and because of what she did she was talking about it. An historical significance about A Raisin in the Sun, is that Lorraine Hansberry earned the New York Drama Critics Circle Award as the year’s best play. “A Raisin in the sun brought African Americans into the theater and onto the stage.” The word is that “the reason was that never before, in the entire history of the American theater, had so much truth been seen on stage.
Hansberry Lorraine. A Raisin in the Sun. [1959] Literature. 5th ed. Eds. James N. N. Pickering and Jeffery D. Hoeper. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice, O. 1700-57.