At first, a Raisin in The Sun may seems like an ordinary, flat play. Once you look into the story, written by Lorraine Hansberry in 1959, you find the deeper rooted lines. The play takes place before WWII, and she covers the racial and gender discriminations the main character's experience. A Raisin in the Sun goes against society's ideas of gender roles. The main characters consist of three women living in a house with two men. Walter, who is the oldest doesn't fit the role of head of the house at all, compared to the strong and independent Mama Younger. Benetha is Walter’s sister, who Walter tries to shut down with his own power, but fails and Benetha’s dreams pulls through.
Mama Younger’s role in the house is different from any other thing one would’ve seen from the time period of 1959. Hansberry portrays Mama as an older, stronger, wiser woman. She runs the house, owns the house, handles the money and watches over the rest of the family. Unlike Walter in the play, Mama cares more about the family. “When the world gets ugly enough – a woman will do
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From the storyline, however, he definitely doesn’t fit the criteria. Walter starts out in the beginning by being crude to his wife. Walter started defying Ruth’s actions, when Ruth denied giving their son extra money he “(Without even looking at his son, still staring hard at his wife) [said] In fact, here’s another fifty cents…Buy yourself some fruit today – or take a taxicab to school or something!” (Act I, Scene i). And that is just one example of one of Walter’s faults. As the head of the house, you should also support your family. He ends up wanting to look for peace, skipping his working hours to go hang out around town and drink when his family doesn’t know. When the family finds out, they all are in disbelief - Mama responds “It’s dangerous son [...] when a man goes outside to look for peace” (Act I, Scene ii) with disgrace in her