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A Raisin In The Sun Joseph Asagai Characters

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Joseph Asagai
The definition of “character” or “a character” is the mental and moral distinctive qualities to an individual, or a person in a novel, story or play (Dictionary.com). Usually as a reader or an audience focus on the main characters, the problems they are facing, the hardships they overcome, and the way their actions affect the other characters within the story. We as readers rarely think of the secondary characters that truly make the story a masterpiece. In the play A Raisin in the Sun, a character by the name of Joseph Asagai, takes an African American family back to their African roots during a time of American history where true African culture was not favored. Joseph’s character is extremely nationalistic and embraces Afrocentrism. He defies the assimilation and Americanization within the story, and also shows a main character, Beneatha, that there are more paths in life than the one she is choosing.
Joseph Asagai plays a key role in A Raisin in the Sun by taking the family back to their African roots. In one of the first scenes, Joseph sends Beneatha dresses from Nigeria that are beautiful and full of life. Beneatha dances around the small family apartment, twirling and singing in pure joy as her family watches her. These dresses were traditional, African dresses worn by Joseph’s sister, maybe …show more content…

Joseph Asagai defines what it means to truly be a successful African American in the play A Raisin in the Sun. Joseph is smart, well educated, and deeply rooted with his African culture. One could say that Joseph is an antagonist, since in the at the end of the play Beneatha is considering going to Africa to continue her exploration of medicine. Joseph not only shows the family in the play the rooted culture of African Americans, but the audience of the time as well, who may or may not have known much about

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The play A Raisin in the Sun by Lorraine Hansberry debuted on Broadway in 1959, and the movie was made in 2008. “A Raisin in the Sun” is about the Younger family, the fifth generation of lower-class African-Americans living in Chicago’s Southside. They are faced with problems such as racial discrimination, poverty, and conflicting dreams. As the family decides on how to spend the insurance check of $10,000 from Walter’s father’s death, these problems cause many conflicts to rise. Reading the 1959 play and the 2008 movie, I have realized certain similarities and differences in how the story plays out.

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In the novel A Raisin In The Sun, Lorraine Hansberry brings in multiple characters for brief periods. Each character impacts the story in his or her own specific way. In Hansberry’s realistic fiction novel, she allows the reader to experience what it is like to live in a time period where African Americans and Whites are not considered equals. She gives in depth scenarios, showing what it is truly like to be an African American in Chicago during the 1950’s. The characters in the story experience a multitude of issues involving society, culture, and family.

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As the play progresses, the Youngers clash over their competing dreams. In “A Raisin in the Sun” by Lorraine Hansberry, the role of the hero stays the same in Act I and Act II, but changes in Act III depending on the overall dramatic situation, yet theme of

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No one ever stays the same forever. This is shown in Beneatha Younger in “A Raisin in the Sun”. Beneatha is a young black women, who faces challenges everyday. She is a students at a college and dreams to be a doctor but no one else seems to believe in her. This makes her try harder and makes her change the way she thinks.

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, But are consistently being differed. Lena Younger, otherwise known as, “Mama” is Walter and Beneatha’s mother and the head of the household. With her deceased husbands ten thousand dollar insurance check Lena bought a three thousand-dollar house with a garden where her family would be happy and hopes to save the rest of the money for Beneatha’s medical school. Lena’s dream, “ Festers like a sore” and is the only dream that somewhat comes true.

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In the play Raisin in the Sun written by Lorraine Hansberry takes place on the southside of Chicago where Walter and his family are racially profiled and show us how the survive throughout their struggles. The central struggles for the younger family in their search for the American dream is mostly poverty and being racially profiled against for their actions. Hansberry challenges the traditional gender roles and issues of dominance throughout the play when Mama gives Walter lee the rest of the money at the end of the play. He becomes all excited and was supposed to save some for himself and put the rest of the money to Beneatha 's education. Instead, he gave all that money to Willy another character in the play which later on that he stole from him.

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“A Raisin in the Sun,” written by Lorraine Hansberry in 1959, was the first play ever produced on Broadway by an African-American woman and was considered ground-breaking for it’s time. Titled after Langston Hughes’ poem “Harlem,” sometimes known as “A Dream Deferred,” the play and the subsequent film adaptations are honest examinations of race, family, poverty, discrimination, oppression and even abortion in urban Chicago after WWII. The original play was met with critical praise, including a review by Brooks Atkinson of the New York Times where he wrote, “For A Raisin in the Sun is a play about human beings who want, on the one hand, to preserve their family pride and, on the other hand, to break out of the poverty that seems to be their fate. Not having any axe to grind, Miss Hansberry has a wide range of topics to write about-some of them hilarious, some of them painful in the extreme.” The original screen adaptation released in 1961 was highly acclaimed in its own right, and was chosen in 2005 for preservation in the United States of America National Film Registry by the Library of Congress for its cultural and historical significance.

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In A Raisin in the Sun, a play written by Lorraine Hansberry, the audience was able to obtain a sense of the struggle for the American dream. We are introduced to the Youngerś a black family living in the Southside of Chicago around the 1950’s. Each member of this family has their own meaning to what is the American dream. A Raisin in the Sun teaches us that even though life might be full of conflicts, it is important to not give up on our dreams.

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Reader Response: 3 “A Raisin in the Sun” by Lorraine Hansberry, is a play about a black families experience in 1950s South Side Chicago. The story revolves around what happens to the family when Lena Younger, the matriarch of the family, receives a ten thousand dollar life insurance check upon the death of her husband. Everyone from the family has different plans for what they want to do with the money. Lena Younger serves as the head of the family. She is Walter and Beneatha’s caring mother so they and Ruth call her Mama.

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Throughout the 1950s, people of color have struggled with achieving their dreams due to the lack of equality that is portrayed in that specific time era. It has been a constant battle for equality for all races and genders over the course of time. In Lorraine Hansberry’s play A Raisin In the Sun the character Beneatha struggles with her racial inequality, education, and gender stereotyping. These specific struggles are the blocks she deals with trying to achieve her dream.

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Racism is a major issue that has effected many people since its discovery. Racism is the hatred by a person of one race pointed at a person of another race. A Raisin in the Sun deals with the impact of racism on the life of the younger family.

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A Raisin in the Sun was an innovative play for its era. Lorraine Hansberry produces in the Younger household one of the first authentic portrayals of a black household on an American stage, in an era where primarily black spectators just didn’t exist. African-American characters, typically minor and comedic, mostly hired racial stereotypes before this play. Lorraine Hansberry, nevertheless, displays a whole black household in an authentic view, one that is unbecoming and anything but comedic. She makes use of black dialect all through the play and raises significant concerns and struggles, for instance poverty, bigotry and racism.

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A Raisin in the Sun addresses major social issues such as racism and feminism which were common in the twentieth century. The author, Lorraine Hansberry, was the first playwright to produce a play that portrayed problematic social issues. Racism and gender equality are heavily addressed throughout the play. Even though we still have these issues today, in the 1950’s and 60’s the issues had a greater part in society. Racism and gender have always been an issue in society, A Raisin in the Sun is an important piece of American history during that time period.

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In Act 1, Beneatha’s quest to find her personal identity is seen in the way she expresses herself, her ambitions, her roots and the way she deviates from what is acceptable in her family. She tries to find ways to express herself such as trying different hobbies. In the past, Beneatha has been a part of a play-acting group, horseback-riding club, and in Act 1 starts guitar lessons (47). She also has the ambition to become a doctor which is looked down upon by her brother, Walter Lee (38). Additionally, her African roots are important to her search for identity.

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Just within the recent decades, men and women started to fight against the gender stereotypes and started to challenge their roles in a family and in the society. The play, A Raisin in the Sun, portrays the lives of African–Americans during the 1950s. Lorraine Hansberry, a writer and a social activist, reinforced the traditional gender roles, especially female’s, by depicting how the Youngers interact and how they act in an economical struggle. Throughout the play, A Raisin in the Sun, she uses Walter Lee Younger, Ruth Younger and Lena Younger to reinforce the traditional role of fathers, wives and mothers within a family.

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