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Similarities Between Harlem And A Raisin In The Sun

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Life put on hold The play A Raisin in the Sun by Lorraine Hansberry. This play was written in 1959. This play was important because it changed many people's lives and how they lived. This play is mainly about how a colored family lived in a small apartment-like house. Mama’s husband Big Walter passed away and the family got $10.000 for his insurance. Mama spent $3.500 on a house where white people live. The poem “Harlem” by Langston Hughes. This poem is mainly talking about if dreams come true or not. Many things can be the same in “Harlem” and A Raisin in the Sun. Walter from A Raisin in the Sun relates to the lines in “Harlem" because Walter has a hard time holding back his anger, he always goes out to drink when he's in a bad mood and …show more content…

thinking his mom didn’t trust him before she had said she trusted him and thinking that his mama didn’t want him to have any of the money. Another line Walter relates to in the poem “Harlem” is the line that says “What happens to a dream …show more content…

One way Mama relates to a line in “Harlem” is when in the poem the line says “What happens to a dream deferred?” Mama relates to this line because Mama had got all the money from her husband and Walter just gave it all away in minutes. Mama had also trusted Walter with the money she gave him but he didn't follow the rules that she had said when she gave him the money. Mama wanted to help the family with buying a house and other things so they could move and live a happy life but all she got to do with the money she got was buy a house. In the text it says “Son, I gave you sixty-five hundred dollars. Is it gone? all of it?” (Hansberry Scene 3 Act 2 P 230). Another line that Mama relates to in the poem “Harlem” is when it says “Does it stink like raw meat” because Mama is sad/mad that Walter gave the money away to someone she hadn’t trusted much, Mama is also letting out how she feels with what she says to Walter and the family. Mama also thought she could trust Walter with the money she had given him but then she realized that she couldn’t because he gave it all away, so now he has to earn his trust back. In the text it says “I seen him… night after night… come in… and look at that rug…

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Harlem Walter Dean Myers/ Christopher Myers Fiction; Grade 2 Setting; Tone/Style Summary In this poem, the author Walter Dean Myers reminisces about the city he considers home and elaborates on the features of African American Culture that made it so wonderful. As the author describes the art, music, and sheer personality that existed in this city teeming with ambition, he uses powerful imagery to portray the “Yellow, tan, brown, black, red/ Green, gray, bright/ Colors loud enough to be heard/ Light on asphalt streets/ Sun yellow shirts on burnt umber/ Bodies/ Demanding to be heard/ Seen.” Activities My Community: Students will represent elements of their community through some form of artwork (sculpture, poem, drawing, collage, etc.).

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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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Harlem changes those who live in it. One example of this is when the narrator starts out saying that “he hadn’t ever turned hard or evil or disrespectful, the way kids can, so quick, so quick, especially in Harlem.” (Baldwin 31)

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Art Spiegelman's Maus and Elie Wiesel's Night are two novels that show the experience of being a holocaust survivor. Regardless, the two books differ in their narrative style while still keeping the similarities in the themes. The following essay will show the differences between the two texts in their narrative style, the portrayal of the main character's relationships, and the impact of the book on the reader. First off, Maus and Night are considerably different in the way that they use their narrative style. Maus is a graphic novel that uses images to convey the horrors of the holocaust while Night is traditional and uses the same novel format to relay the same horrors.

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When Mama and Walter are talking amongst themselves Walter starts to leave because he needs to get some alone time. Mama tells him “ you got a job, a nice wife, a fine boy and” Walter stops Mama and says “ Mama, a job? I open and close doors all day long. I drive a man around in his limousine and I say, “Yes, sir; no, sir; very good, sir; shall I take the Drive, sir?” ( Hansberry 1567).

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The narrator shows internal and external conflicts that antagonize the characters throughout the short story. In the beginning the narrator points out that his students are “Filled with rage”(561). He describes the neighborhood and streets to be a “boiling sea”… and “killing streets of our childhood”(566). The setting of Harlem represents anger that is barley suppressed by the people living there. The community is affected and plagued by the horrors of the streets.

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The narrator associates Sonny’s struggles within the bigger picture of Harlem, associating Sonny within the poverty, crime, and drug abuse that has taken over the entire

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“Choices made, whether bad or good, follow you forever and affect everyone in their path one way or another.” J.E.B. Spredemann. The theme I chose to analyze is choices and consequences. For this type of writing assignment, I’ve decided to choose the following readings. The poem titled Harlem was written by Langston Hughes in 1951.

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Historically speaking Harlem has been known to be a historically African American society. In this society, nothing came easily to the residences. During the time of the story “Sonny’s Blues” by James Baldwin, the society was not only impoverished but they also had to endure oppression in their daily lives. In this story, Baldwin depicts Harlem as a jailed community where the residences are trapped. In this environment, the people are not given the opportunity to succeed for themselves not to even mention their families.

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We are given a deeper understanding of just what sort of environment Harlem is through the narrator’s

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Harlem: A Dream Deferred Should we ever delay the inevitable? Postponing one's dreams does not make them less desirable; but the opposite, it causes damage and ruin. Slaves had been free for just about 90 years and still were not being treated equally when the poem Harlem by Langston Hughes was written. He uses imagery, figurative language, and symbols to show what happens to a community when a vision or hope for it, is pushed aside.

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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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The poem “Harlem” seems like a simple poem that talks about a dream that fades away. The poem is more symbolic than it seems though. The three sentences that have a huge impact on this poem’s symbolism are spread out through the poem. A reader needs to keep in mind that the speaker is talking about a dream in these sentences. “Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun?”

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Harlem shows that the American Dream can’t be achieved but Of Mice and Men the author shows hope in obtaining the dream. In the poem the use punctuation of question marks to set the tone of the author being uncertain and anxious. The poem is negative and is shown in the questions, “Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun?”. This is negative because it is talking about the how the American Dream doesn’t last. This is because it dries up and one realizes the dream is to impossible to obtain so they decide to give up.

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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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