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Raisin In The Sun Critical Lens

739 Words3 Pages

A Black family, the Younger family, live in a rundown home on the Southside of Chicago. Taking place in the 1950s, they face struggles in order to improve their lives, but their aspirations lead to clash with reality. Lorraine Hansberry wrote her play A Raisin in the Sun based on her own experiences of being radicalized and wanted to express the obstacles and resilience that African Americans faced during this timeline. This time period of the 1950s consisted of racism, segregation, poverty, and wishing for more opportunities for the marginalized communities of Black people. In Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun, she utilized the Cultural and Marxist critical lenses to analyze the character of Mama to show that to have money, there are sacrifices …show more content…

Their aspirations stem from their desire to break free from the oppression they have endured throughout their lives, yet they find it difficult to make their ambitions come true. Mama has the dream of securing a home for her loved ones in hopes of a brighter future. She yearns to escape poverty and to create a better life for her children and grandchildren. Mama grew up poor and saw her husband work and work his whole life to be able to provide for his family until he passed away, which inspired Mama to do the same as the head of the family. By applying cultural criticism to the character of Mama, we can understand why it is so important to her to create a better life for her family, as the idea of the American dream would have been very prevalent. The American dream tells us that anyone, regardless of race or class, can achieve great wealth, prosperity, and happiness. Coming from a lower economic background, the dream of breaking the shackles of poverty would have been the biggest priority for her. Analyzing the culture of the time can also explain why she faced so much hardship and opposition in achieving this dream, as she lived in a period of segregation, where racism was extremely common in American

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