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Mrs. Mallard's American Dream

1340 Words6 Pages

In our society, freedom has been a largely sought after phenomenon. Freedom of women, freedom of the Black race, freedom of homosexuals, and the list goes on. The concept of the fight for freedom has never been one unfamiliar to our world. This fight has begun many years ago and continues today. Though we may all fight for a different kind of freedom, or even fight in different ways, in reality, we are all fighting the same battle. The central conflicts of Kate Chopin’s “The Story of an Hour” and Lorraine Hansberry’s “A Raisin in the Sun” share internal conflicts in which the protagonists struggle between their dreams of freedom and the expectations placed on them by society. While, in the end, this struggle leads both stories in different …show more content…

However, each of them takes a turn in a different direction. When Mrs. Mallard learns that her husband is, in fact, alive and well, she literally dies of a heart attack caused by a heart condition mentioned early on in the story. Though some may argue my interpretation, I believe that she truly died of the devastation of the death of her dream of being free. While the death Mrs. Mallard’s dream caused her to die at a moments notice, the death of Walter’s dream of a opening liquor store caused him to live. When Walter seeks to replenish the lost money, he desperately contacts Mr. Lindner from the “welcoming committee” of Clybourne Park with the intention to accept a monetary offer to reconsider moving into the white neighborhood where Mama purchased the house, he has an epiphany himself. He turns from his selfishness and suddenly realizes that there is more to life than he’d seen before. As Walter changes his mind and rejects the offer and states, “ …we come from people who had a lot of pride (A Raisin in the Sun in Gardner, Lawn, Ridl & Schakel, 2013, p. 1050)”, the reader sees him realize that family and dignity of himself and his race was worth more than the dream of what he considered to be freedom. Walter Lee recognizes that the true freedom existed in maintaining his dignity as a Black man and having the right to inhabit any place in this world that he and his family desired. He would no longer be a slave to society’s expectation of the black

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