Essays on A Raisin In The Sun

Questions and Answers Based on Hansberry’s, A Raisin in the Sun.

Walter enquired about Ruth because he could see that she was looking fatigued. It is arguable that his concern towards her was fueled by the knowledge of her physiological situation. The fact that Ruth was pregnant means that her new physiological state might have contributed to the concern expressed by Walther in enquiring about her condition.

Why is Ruth upset when Walter gives Travis the money?

There are to plausible reasons as to why Ruth is angry at the decision of Walter to give some money to Travis. Firstly, Walter’s actions are irresponsible given the financial situation in the household. They did not have surplus from which they ...

Lorraine Hansberry's play is one of the most famous literary works of the late 50s, which raises the issues of racism, racial discrimination, and cultural identity of African Americans. The author touches on the social problems of the postwar period, and most of these problems relates to the African-American cultural heritage. Hansberry describes the life of an ordinary African American family living in the south of Chicago. The family members' relationship and the response to the opportunity to achieve something more reveals the basis of the plot and the perspectives of the play. The play's problematics affect mainly the ...

Many Americans tend today to believe that a realist drama A Raisin in the Sun, written by Lorraine Hansberry is a brilliant example that clearly opens up and brings to public such important themes as economic hardship and racial prejudice. The author did perfectly her job, as she portrayed not only how important the family is, but also send the message to society that every individual should value and reach the set goals in life, despite racial discrimination, troubles, and obstacles on his way. First and foremost, a united family is the most precious thing that every individual may ...

Analysis of the title of the play “A Raisin in the Sun”

Introduction The title of the play, “A Raisin in the Sun” has in depth meaning based on the literal outlook. First, we can look at the meaning of Raisin. A raisin is a dried grape. So, when we look at dried grapes, when left in the sun, the probability is that they will get worse in such a way that, a person might not admire them. The title thus has a direct connection to the story which is about dreams and realizing them in life. Many times, people often forget about their dreams letting distractions come on their way ...

Because Lorraine Hansberry’s play A Raisin in the Sun takes its title from Langston Hughes’ poem about the dangers of deferring dreams due to racism, many people assume that the primary theme of the play is the corrosive effects of racism on the souls of African Americans. Indeed, this play is about a family of African American extraction who runs into racism as they try to move from the inner city projects of Chicago to the suburb of Clyborn Park. However, there are other themes at work in the play as well, such as the ins and outs ...

Loraine Hansberry’s iconic play A Raisin in the Sun tells the story of the beleaguered Younger family, who face racism and interpersonal strife in their life on Chicago’s south side. Given the title’s status as a line from a Langston Hughes play, “A Dream Deferred,” A Raisin in the Sun is itself about dreams, and the ways in which they are denied to people of color in America. The dreams of Walter, Benethea and Mama Younger are ‘deferred’ in this way throughout the play, showcasing the unique struggle that black families have to get ahead in ...

‘A Raisin in the Sun’ is about an African American family who struggle against racism and poverty to get out of the ghetto they live in and move into a white suburb. However Hansberry’s play is also filled with other themes such as pride, family, dreams and there are also many characters who dare to dream beyond their current life. The play focuses on racism, but on poverty as well. However, the beauty of the play lies in the fact that the central theme is family bondage. The poverty in their lives affects every member of the Younger ...

The 1961 movie “A Raisin in the Sun” is was adapted from Lorraine Hansberry’s play “A Raisin in the Sun.” It portrays themes that highlight the life of the Younger family after the demise of Mr. Younger. The movie starts after the death of Mr. Younger, and the family pursues Mr. Younger’s life insurance payout of $10,000. Mr. Younger’s widow, Lena, her son, Walter, her daughter in law Ruth (Walter’s wife), her daughter Beneatha (Walter’s sister) and her grandson, Travis, all have some plan on how to use the $10,000 insurance payout. ...

‘A Raisin in the Sun’ on the outset is about the Younger family, an African American family who struggle against racism and poverty to get out of the ghetto they live in and move into a white suburb. However Hansberry’s play is also filled with other themes such as pride, family, dreams and full of characters who dare to dream beyond their current life. The beauty of the play lies in the fact that it not only focuses on racism but also on poverty. The poverty in their lives affects every member of the Younger family albeit in ...

Langston Hughes’ in his poem "Harlem (A Dream Deferred)" and Lorraine Hansberry’s "A Raisin in the Sun" look at the impact of racial prejudice in the lives of African-Americans. The main idea of both writers is show how the economic effect of how racism leads individuals to dream about a better life. Both writers describe the psychology of having dreams and ambitions, and the how living in a society built on racism conflicts with the success of dreams.

The link between the both pieces is far more intricate than just an individual facing racial prejudice. It is about risky ...

Character analysis of Lena Younger (Mama)

Introduction The character of Lena Younger in the drama A Raisin in the Sun in the year 1959 won the awarded of the New York Drama Critics Circle to be the best character that portrays the most Interesting and one of most important visions of women. The character of Lena Younger evolved from the images of female protagonists in Hansberry’s plays. This character was created to portray a female character during the 1950s that evolved from the African and White American plays that confirmed the standards of American stage prior to 1950. During that period the character of ...

“A Raisin in the Sun” is a luminous book by Lorraine Hansberry. The book is some of rare books that describe everyday life of African Americans and also hint about their oppression and civil rights. This paper intends to discuss the character, Walter Lee and different aspects of his personality including his masculinity. One prominent characteristic of Walter Lee’s personality that appears very prominently is his masculine nature. Walter Lee always tries to impose his own decisions in his family. He wants his family members to follow his suggestions and to act in accordance with whatsoever he says. ...

“A Raisin in the Sun” is a highly acclaimed play by Lorraine Hansberry. Hansberry has portrayed the life of an African American family in a realistic manner. The portrayal of characters is something that attracts readers and also gives a glimpse of African Americans life in the mid twenties. This paper analyzes the character of Walter Lee, and also talks about different facets of the character. Walter Lee is the most popular character of the play that has been portrayed as a masculine, caring, ill decisive and confused man. Walter Lee is not satisfied with his current life style and stature in ...

Introduction

Discrimination against blacks by whites is a theme that has been explored on various levels and Langston Hughes’ poem ‘Harlem’ is no exception. Here, the poet seems to be bemoaning the fate of the young black man who can never achieve his dreams – they are always deferred, if he is not unlucky enough to end up hanged from a tree in an all too common lynching. The theme of dreams deferred is also strongly present in Lorraine Hansberry’s play, ‘A raisin in the Sun’ that also follows the Hughes poem liberally, even taking its title from a line in the poem. ...

‘Instructor’s Name’

A Raisin in the Sun by Lorraine Hansberry Written in the year 1959, ‘A raisin in the sun’ by Lorraine Hansberry, premiered during the early stages of the Civil Right movement. Hansberry had experienced discrimination in her life, when her father moved their home outside the Chicago ghetto, and had to file a lawsuit to have his house protected. Influenced by these events, she wrote this play which talks about a poor Black family, and the financial and racial obstacles experienced by them. The play won the Best American Play award given by the New York Drama Critics Circle, ...

“A Raisin in the Sun” is a play written by Lorraine Hansberry. It tells the story of a 1950’s African-American family, the Youngers, living on the South Side of Chicago. As the play begins, many themes could arguably be considered the most important. Each one speaks to an important part of sociology, and even American history. Dreams are coming to fruition for many members of the play, and the characters show how important it can be, throughout their discourse, to follow those dreams. The importance of family is also evident throughout Hansberry’s play, as we see Walter Younger struggle ...

It was the 1920s. Slavery was over. African American people were moving by the hoards to the Midwest and the Northeast in search of a better, more equal life. The life everyone deserves. Many of the landed in a neighborhood north of central park in Manhattan known as Harlem. Once there, something magical happened. There was a burst of life—art and music were pouring out of this and other black communities that spanned as far as the Caribbean populations in Paris. While this decade is now lovingly referred to as the Jazz Age, it is the art of the Harlem Renaissance ...

Introduction

A raisin in the sun cannot be complete without the influence of people who are outside of the Younger family. Every character that is introduced ion different scenes in the book has a fundamental part to play in how the different themes are developed. They make the themes in the book have a real effect, and the audience can tell that the themes are universal concepts that happened to the people in the society. The book reverberates around an African American family that struggles to have their mark in a world that is full of atrocities and adversaries that threaten their very ...

The conflicts found in the art of the Harlem Renaissance are not a conflict of white between black, instead it is a conflict within the African American as they try to make sense of their place in the world and society. Laura Barrette speaks in her of a concept originally introduced by W.E.B. DuBois’s theory of a “double-consciousness” within African American texts. In her essay, “’Mark my words’: Speech, Writing and Identity in Three Harlem Renaissance Stories” she writes of this double consciousness, saying, “African American texts are “mulattoes,” struggling between two parallel discursive universes” (Barrette, 1). This idea of double ...

‘A Raisin in the Sun’ is a play written by the Lorraine Hansberry in year 1959. The play is inspired by Langston Hughers’s poem “Harlem”. The play focuses on experiences of a black family. The poem also inform readers about the irrational and illogical world. The poem informs about the truth and reality of the real world. All the characters and story of the play is driven by the poem. One can easily find powerful connection between the circumstances and selections made by the characters in the poem and in the story. This paper intends to discuss the similarities between “ ...

The play by Lorraine Hansbury is a story that is based on the experiences of a black family within an estate in a Chicago neighborhood. Poverty and abject poverty for that matter is a central theme within the play. Various incidences and scenarios are used to describe the state of poverty of the family. The most common problems revolve around investments, and the family tends to have more conflicts in line with the money issues. Broadly, although Lorraine Hansbury’s “A Raisin in the Sun” touches on many themes, pro-integration is one of the things that come out strongly in the play. This ...

Death of a salesman is a play where Willy Lowman spends most of his time on the road as a salesman. He did his job as directed, and manages to purchase mortgage from his sales. He is also trying to raise his two kids and a wife, as he struggles to attain The American Dream. A raisin in the sun portrays a few weeks of an African -American family, the Youngers in the 1950’s and live in the Southside of Chicago. In Death of a salesman the character Willy shows money is everything, because everything that is happening around him revolves around money. ...

Fiction and drama often deals with how characters deal with their dreams and aspirations; often, characters sabotage themselves and prevent themselves from achieving their dreams, while other times the world they live in keeps them from having what they want. The American Dream means many things for different people, but its common conception is the idea that people can achieve social mobility and prosperity no matter what they start with, if they work hard enough and seize opportunities (Cullen 191). For African-Americans in the 20th century, the American Dream itself was much harder to achieve than for whites - ...

While Michelle Gordon analyses the themes presented in Lorraine Hansberry’s “A Raisin in the Sun”, Zachary emphasizes on the setting of the play and how it is presented to the audience. Both critiques have a common ground that although “A Raisin in the Sun” has a racism dimension, its success as a play which presents the prevailing Chicago conditions at that point in history. In the setting of a Chicago ghetto where a black family resides, the play reveals the level of poverty and suffering experienced by the large family with Beneatha’s shortage of school fees among other issues that unfold in ...

“Instructor’s Name’

The Raisin In the Sun A Raisin in the sun is a play that epitomizes the struggle of the African American community in America, during the Jim Crow era. The slavery shackles had been removed and many rights were bestowed on the Blacks during that period, but all those legislations and laws could not erase from the hearts of the people the racial disparity, which had grown strong roots over centuries. This play written by Lorraine Hansberry, won the award for the Best American Play and Hansberry went on to become the first American writer to get this award which ...

Introduction

Empowerment can be defined as the process of increasing or raising the capacity of an individual to make choices that will help them realize their goals or outcomes. Empowerment can take the role of a whole organization where the different individuals’ capacity is increased to make better choices that will transform to better lives and desired actions. Increasing the efficiency of an individual to perform a task better means empowering the named individual to realize his/her set out goals. Fairness in organizations is one of the means of empowering the individuals as there is collective improvement in service delivery. Monitoring the ...

In the play A Raisin in the Sun, one of the most important themes is the coming of age of the main characters, Walter and Benethea. In the beginning of the play, they are both very flawed and selfish characters – Walter seeks to help the family in the wake of his father’s death, but his decisions often lead to disastrous consequences. Benethea, on the other hand, must learn to make her own decisions and forge ahead in life, as well as change her already established preconceptions of race and identity. Hansberry’s play, like the Langston Hughes poem “ ...

Introduction

A Raisin in the sun is a play written and directed by an African American woman and produced on stage. The play was produced for the first on stage in 1959 to depict the struggles of African American in the struggle to claim the American dream of the 1950s. The cast is made up of a young family living in Washington Park of Chicago’s neighborhood. The main characters in the play are Walter Younger, Ruth Younger, Travis Younger, Lena Younger, Beneatha Younger, Joseph Asagai and George Murchison among many others. The plot is a mixture of African American culture and the ...

‘A Raisin in The Sun’ is an excellent literary work by Lorraine Hansberry that touches very emotional aspect of human life. The story moves around a poor family who lives on south side of Chicago. The story is very impressive and easy to understand. The family described in the story struggles for their daily needs and maintains dignity along with a dream of better future. The story very effectively describes relationship between family members. The story depicts how conflict arises in a poor family and how different family members react to those conflicts. The story successfully spread its magic on human emotions. ...

Hansberry’s famous play “A Raisin in the Sun” premiered to an enthusiastic crowd on Broadway in 1959. The play was timely, as it premiered amidst the growing tension regarding the Civil Rights Movement in the United States, and it dealt extensively with many of the issues that black families faced in the United States at that time. However, race is not the only important thematic idea that Hansberry’s famous play dealt with; inequality between genders, classes, and even generations is examined extensively throughout the play. Within “A Raisin in the Sun,” the issues of gender and racial ...

Everyone in society has a role to play. It might be assigned by gender, class, socio-economics or race. It is evident that America, this big melting pot, has many such roles that they delegate to people on a daily basis. There is the role of men, women, children, workers, rich, poor, middle class, upper class, blacks and minorities and whites. In most situations, a woman is placed on the lowest rung on the socio-economic ladder. Her role has been defined for her as a girl and follows her through womanhood. In the case of the black woman, the role has always been one ...

Lorraine Hansberry’s renowned play A Raisin in the Sun is a potent narrative of what it meant to be an African-American in the United States during the 1950s of the previous century. Every member of the Younger family has his own individual dream, whether it is Beneatha’s desire to become a doctor or Walter’s need to have money in order to provide for his family as the only man the Younger women can lean on, but they all go about attaining this dream in different ways. Like most other characters in the play, Walter feels trapped by his ...

According to James Snead, marking, mythification and omission happens to be the three common devices which get applied by filmmakers to consign blacks to obscurity on screen. Snead postulates that, when these three devices get employed on screen, they succeed in showing the little significance of blacks (Snead 4). Therefore, this paper shall examine four films, which tend to support Snead’s ramifications; these four films are; “cabin in the sky”, “a raisin in the sun”, “nothing but a man” and a “killer of sheep”. Taking a closer look at these films will end u revealing the use of the three devices mentioned ...

What happens to a dream deferred, does it dry up like a raisin in the sun, or fester like a sore? This is the line from the Langston Hughes poem that served as the inspiration for the play and movie “A Raisin In The Sun.” The title is about dreams, but the story is about family; the structural and functional internal conflicts and the solid front it presents to the world. The solidarity of the Younger family is tested when the opportunity presents itself, in the form of a $10,000 life insurance payment. The way this money is viewed by the different ...

A raisin in the sun is a play which portrays the life of a lower class black family residing in the slums of Chicago. The play describes their struggle at different fronts at same time. They are struggling economically, socially, for their own identity and to fulfill their dreams. The story refers to the period of post world war when the American society was not very helping for the blacks and approach of the people was biased. The play is well acclaimed and highlights the set of mind of a socially and economically weak family and their different kinds of problems. In ...

It should be no surprise that the idea of utopia has often been explored by American writers, since one could argue that America itself exists as a sort of utopian ideal. The words of the Declaration of Independence posit a sort of utopia in their idealistic talk of ’life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.’ This is very bound up with the notion of America as a new world, a new place where fresh starts can be made and the mistakes of the past avoided: The utopian passages in Euro-American writings tended to elevate American spaces and colonists by comparing them to ...

A Raisin in the Sun – Lorraine Hansberry Lorraine Hansberry’s play A Raisin in the Sun was first performed in 1959 and was an immediate critical and commercial success. It is justly celebrated for these reasons. Ray and Kundu (31) describe it as ...a milestone in women’s drama. It was the first play to be written by a black woman to be produced on Broadway, and the first play by a black woman to win the New York Drama Critics Circle Award. The play is based on Hansberry’s own experience as Adams (9) makes clear: “She ...

A Raisin in the Sun and Othello are two plays with different employ of setting. In A Raisin in the Sun, setting is amongst the very significant aspects in the play; this is because the Youngers are trying to purchase another house in a different locality, their present home and neighborhood has particular importance. The play occurs in an isolated southern part of Chicago between 1945 and 1959. During this episode the majority of American-people were successful and some racial queries were beginning to be raised.

In this play, the Youngers were a plebeian black family struggling against financial hardship and ...

In the play A Raisin in the Sun, one of the most important themes is the coming of age of the main characters, Walter and Benethea. In the beginning of the play, they are both very flawed and selfish characters – Walter seeks to help the family in the wake of his father’s death, but his decisions often lead to disastrous consequences. Benethea, on the other hand, must learn to make her own decisions and forge ahead in life, as well as change her already established preconceptions of race and identity.

As the play begins, the family is contemplating ...

Introduction

The family is the basic social unit of any group of people or community. It is held in high regards thus it is somewhat sacred. A family consists of people related by blood to be precise. There are two types of families which are nuclear and extended. The nuclear family is made up of father, mother and the children. On the other hand, an extended family comprises of people from the nuclear family as well as cousins, uncles, aunts and grandparents. In A Taste of Honey, a play by Shelagh Delaney it portrays the family in a different aspect together with ...