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The play “Raisin in the Sun” by Lorraine Hansberry, is a powerful play that displays what it like is to have dreams deferred. Hansberry extracted her title from a well-known poem called “Harlem” by Langston Hughes. “Harlem” serves as an epigraph for the play and Hansberry’s play does an excellent job expressing the poem’s themes. The play provokes feelings of suspense and drama as we watch the character’s endeavors, only to be crushed by the very same thing that they yearn for. My analysis of the play and the poem proves that Hansberry’s play was able to capture and manifest the themes of the poem
Hardships and trials help to shape, mold, and create characters in stories, this is evident within the play A Raisin in the Sun by Lorraine Hansberry. Hansberry’s assertive character, Beneatha, connects to the messages from classic Motown songs of the time period such as: inequality, identity, and respect. These songs sing of some characteristics and problems Beneatha holds. Through the soulful sound of Nina Simone’s song, “Wish I Knew How It Would Feel to Be Free”, a cry for equality is heard that is similar to the one from Beneatha in A Raisin in the Sun.
In the play “A Raisin in the Sun,” the family explores many issues, both within their family and with outside conflicts. This play has a historical feel to it. In Chicago 's south side a black family is living in a run-down apartment. It takes the readers back to a time that many young people don’t know of, and a time that offers respect to older generations (1959). The play takes on a few social reforms.
Things were completely disparate in the 1950’s from what they are now. Especially for African-American people, they had strong prejudices against them, which could make it impossible for them to do things in society. In Lorraine Hainsberry’s A Raisin in the Sun we meet the Younger family, an African American family in the 50’s, but we get to see them have dreams and attempt to follow those dreams. We get a close look at what a typical lifestyle would be for people in the same situation. The Younger family are fantastic examples of the American Dream, but they each have their own different dreams, and each dream has an outer shell plus a deeper meaning on the inside.
The play deals with the search for a sense of belonging on different scales. Beneatha’s character journey throughout the play is representative of one’s search for belonging in the world.
A Raisin in the sun The Younger’s new living room would have the same furniture as the old house, but arranged with the same taste as the house before. The furniture would look out of place from the rest of the house. The new house would have more windows than the last, but curtains would cover them except for one. Mama’s plant is in front of the open window and basking in the sunlight. The family would look even more tired and dreary than the earlier scenes.
“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.
As a civil rights activist, Stokely Carmichael once said, “We are told,” If you work hard, you’ll succeed”- but if that were true, black people would own the country. We are oppressed because we are black- not because we are ignorant, not because we are lazy, not because we are stupid, but because we are black!” This quote is still relevant even to this day, blacks are still considered a minority and they get treated differently simply because of the color of their skin. People continue to treat others by the color of their skin rather than their character. In Lorraine Hansberry’s play A Raisin in the Sun, the interaction between the themes of race and dreams demonstrates that your race can affect the dreams that you have and what you choose to do about it.
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.
In Lorraine Hansberry 's play, A Raisin in the Sun, the characters of Mama, Walter, and Beneatha are faced with discriminatory housing restrictions, gender inequality, and gender stereotypes that defer their dreams and cause angst amongst the Younger
In Susan Lorraine Hansberry’s play A Raisin in the Sun, the themes identified are dreams and faith that each character signifies throughout their struggles in their daily lives. The theme dreams refer to how each of the main five characters: Ruth Younger, Walter Lee Younger, Travis Younger, Beneatha Younger, and Lena Younger dealt with different oppression situations that took part in their lives that put the dreams on hold. Furthermore, the theme also connects towards the faith that each main character had to pursue to keep their family together after the death of a love one. The characters’ in A Raisin in the Sun tries to chase after a separate dream, unfortunately their dreams are utterly pushed away to realize the importance of their family
The setting of the Raisin in the Sun is the ghetto of Chicago, where most black families lived and most of these black families had dreams of moving to a better neighbourhood, because of crime, but the housing industry causes segregated housing and manipulates communities with white fears of black integration. When Lorraine Hansberry was a child, her family also experienced the results of a government unconcerned with blacks leaving segregation. Lorraine used her play to tell people about her own struggle with racism, her play shows us that her problems were handled with determination. Linder speaks to the Younger family and offers them money to buy their house, because they, the white people feel that a community should share a common background and that negro families are happier when they live in their own communities. This is an example of how the Younger family has experienced racism, while it is true that people with the same background will be happier together, it is also their right to live where they feel they are progressing.
Through the use of the historical lens, looking specifically at the economic struggles, the struggle of unequal opportunity, and the housing covenant that African-American’s faced in the 1950’s, Hansberry’s message of A Raisin in the Sun is revealed: the perseverance of an ethnic minority in a time of racial discrimination. A Raisin in the Sun is set in a time of great racial discrimination, the 1950’s in the united States. This featured racism towards those of color or non-caucasians, and the struggles commonly faced by the African-American family is shown through the eyes of the Younger family through the writing and experiences of Lorraine Hansberry. Of the three major struggles the Younger family faced, the most prominent in Act one is that of financial disability. This is best shown through the working lives of the family.
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.
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.
