A Raisin In The Sun Beneatha Character Traits

A Raisin in the Sun Essay

An Olympic track and field sprinter, Gail Devers, once said “Keep your dreams alive. Understand to achieve anything requires faith and belief in yourself, vision, hard work, determination, and dedication.” Throughout the entirety of the play, Beneatha demonstrates all these traits. Beneatha is set on becoming a doctor from the very beginning, then she starts trying to seek her true cultural identity, and through challenge after challenge with the family, in the end she still circles back to her initial desire. In the play, A Raisin in the Sun by Lorraine Hansberry, Beneatha is a character who wants to be independent and aims for more than marriage in her life. Throughout the play, Beneatha is able to fuel her passions

For instance, Beneatha is fighting with Walter about the money that Mama is going to receive in the mail tomorrow, after losing her husband she receives a check for 10,000 dollars. Walters wants the money to invest in a liquor store and Beneatha needs the money for medical school. They realize the money is not their money, it’s Mama’s and she gets to decide what is done with the money. Beneatha is very eager, “forgive me for wanting to be anything at all!” she sarcastically asks her brother (Hansberry 8). Walter has many reasons why she doesn’t want Beneatha to go to medical school. Walter believes it’s too expensive, women shouldn’t be in the medical profession and he’s selfish about his own dreams. On the contrary, this controversy doesn’t discourage her “I’m going to be a doctor” she says, demonstrating her great ambition (13). She is determined, Beneatha sticks to her dreams no matter what conflicts she faces, she will find a way to get to where she wants to be. By the end of this act Beneatha begins to long for her identity in her

From the very beginning, Beneatha has always been passionate about becoming a doctor. As a result of Walter losing all the money, this dream seems to be unattainable now that there isn’t enough money to use for medical school. Beneatha expresses that helping people is “the most marvelous thing in the world… I wanted to do that.” even from a young age (54). Beneatha initially became interested in helping people when she saw a little boy get hurt when she was younger and the ambulance came to get him and stitched up his face that had split. She never got over the fact that they could just make him right again. However, toward the middle of the third act Beneatha had seemed to lose all hope, “Well- We are all dead now. All the talk about dreams and sunlight that goes on in this house. It’s all dead now.” The sudden loss of money she needed to fuel her dream was all gone now, her ambition was gone too(58). Finally, It is revealed at the end of the play that Beneatha’s boyfriend, Asagi, asked her to marry him and become a doctor in Nigeria. Beneatha's family weighs in and says she would be foolish to marry someone at such a long age, she argues they don’t have a say in who she marries. This is a great opportunity for Beneatha to earn just what she has wanted all these years and get to connect with people