Lorraine Hansberry's A Raisin In The Sun

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Raisin in the Sun

In the story “Raisin in the Sun” there is basically a group of characters all in one family living in a small apartment with everyday their love dying a little more. The family is black and through the whole play it shows how segregation was played in the 1950's. Ruth Younger is a wife of Walter Younger and a Mother of Travis Younger who is living in a small living assortment and just wants to get away and move on to something bigger and something more independent. Now with her being pregnant everything for her is just going down hill. Walter Younger is the husband of Ruth and he is just a self-centered jerk who doesn’t care about anybody’s life but his. He wants to open his own business and he doesn’t care whether the family can afford it he just wants to open a business and he wants to do it whether they approve or not. Walter gets drunk and comes home drunk and makes the Younger’s life they are living worse because everyone else has to put up with his “drunken” behavior. Mama Younger is basically the woman who takes care of everybody and everything. She has a plant that she goes to when times are hard or when she needs strength and hope. Beneatha Younger is Mama’s daughter and Walter’s sister and she is just a brat. She doesn’t know anything she is going to do in her life and she doesn’t know what she wants to do when she grows up. Now with al of that school, she has two guys come into her life, George Murchison and Asagai and that just puts more pressure on her than before and things get a little wild there. Travis Younger is Walter and Ruth’s child and he is just there in the story and at the end Walter changes his whole decision to set a good example on Travis. So Travis saves the day there. The play is full of segregation and hate towards different races and the way that a small living can impact the love of a family and the way they treat each other. Plus the hopes and dreams that everyone has because of something that arrives in the mail get torn apart because of a dramatic climax with a very irresponsible person. Walter and Beneatha’s Father has died and there is a big check coming of his life savings of $10,000 and that is the thing that just tears the family apart. Big family, small living, lots of money, what will happen?

Now, like I told you before, there is something big that is coming in the mail and it is going to cha...

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...ause of the changing of one person who made all problems worse but made the biggest problem better. I basically already said the important issues that were addressed was segregation and the pride that the black people really had in themselves. Also how sad it was that some black people were willing to give in and sell their pride to the white people because the white people had more power and the blacks just wanted to make them happy and go on with their lives. That’s how sad some of the blacks were in their pride. If we could have had all black Mother’s like how Mama was then the whole black race would have had so much more self-confidence in themselves and so much more pride in themselves that they would have never let the white people push them around and they would work their hardest to be treated equally all the time. The play really made me think how much of an impact black speakers had on black people on the fight of segregation and how much everything has changed from the 1950's to today and how great it is that all people of all races are coming together as one, big, happy family Like the blacks sang on their road to freedom, “We shall overcome, some day”... they sure did.

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