Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun weaves a tale of extremes, ranging from bleak despair to ecstatic hope and expectation. It is a production that lays bare the struggles and aspirations of 20th-century African-American culture, and provides a poignant message to the upper echelons of contemporary American society in regard to the struggles of the working class. Hansberry highlights the struggles of the Younger family in their day-to-day life, in the face of the grinding economic and social oppression that they endure while trying to scrape a desperate life in an indifferent Chicago. In Extract 1, Hansberry utilises personification to convey a sense of exhaustion in the overused, worn-out furniture, which is synonymous with the exhaustion the Youngers face while trying to eke out a living while alienated from a world …show more content…
In Extract 1, Hansberry creates a sense that the Youngers are deeply affected by the decaying condition of their living room, which displays their inability to “move up” in the economic world of 20th-century America. This sense of economic destitution is highlighted by Hansberry in her use of adjectives such as “weary”, “tired” and “worn” to describe the condition of the furniture in the room, a series of adjectives which also mirrors the mental attitude of the Youngers as they try to navigate a cold world which is utterly indifferent to their common plight. The imagery of the furniture also creates a real sense of relatability to the reader, in that the common choices of furniture equates the Youngers with the rest of America, allowing the reader to bridge the gap between the two on a mundane, commonplace level. The condition of the furniture
Ever since her rise to fame, Lorraine Hansberry has opened the eyes of many and showed that there is a problem among the American people. Through her own life experiences in the twentieth-century, she has written what she knows and brought forth the issue that there is racial segregation, and it will not be ignored. Her most popular work, A Raisin in the Sun, not only brought African Americans to the theater, but has given many of them hope (Mays 1461). Within this work, we find a “truthful depiction of the sorts of lives lived by many ordinary African Americans in the late 1950s” (Mays 1462). Though there is realism within her work, the idealism is never far away at all. Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun allows one to see that progress is made through an idealistic view of the world and that hope is the root of many changes people search for in life.
Lorraine Hansberry’s “A Raisin in the Sun” reveals the class stratification experienced by African Americans during the post-war period. While the working class Younger family makes the move from the inner city to the suburbs, it is without the encouragement from any other working or middle class African American characters in the play. The experience of the Youngers characterizes the class conflict felt by many African Americans during the suburban migration. Works Cited Hansberry, Lorraine. A. A Raisin in the Sun.
This passage contains a wide array of literary devices, ranging from syntax to figurative language. These devices all help to describe the situation Jim is in, in this part of the book. He stayed the night at the Cutter’s house instead of Ántonia, which resulted in him being injured and humiliated. From the figurative language and imagery at the start of the passage, such as, “My lip was cut and stood out like a snout. My nose looked like a big blue plum” (161), the sheer damage is shown to its full extent. This connects to the larger motif of the past or childhood that backdrops the entire novel, as it is this kind of very drastic experience that impacts someone. Such an event serves an important role in the development of an adolescent, and the repercussions of this event may be elaborated on later in the book.
In Hansberry’s play, A Raisin in the Sun,” she uses the Younger family to show that as individuals strive to reach their dreams they often ignore the aspirations of others but they may eventually learn to support each other in an attempt to better their lives. Hansberry uses each character to express the different views people may have about the American Dream. Each family member has their own pursuit of happiness, which is accompanied by their American Dream. From Momma’s dream of having a better life for her family, Beneatha’s dream of becoming a doctor, and Walter’s dreams of being rich, the Younger family show’s typical dreams of an African American family in the 1950’s.
Throughout Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun, we see the positive and negative effects of chasing the American Dream. Hansberry expresses her different views on the American Dream through the characters and she portrays the daily struggles of a 1950 black family throughout A Raisin in the Sun. In this play, she is able to effectively show the big impact that even small decisions can make on a family. Hansberry shows the many different attachments that come with the fulfillment of this American Dream. Throughout A Raisin in the Sun, each family member has their own pursuit of happiness, which is accompanied by their American Dream.
Lorraine Hansberry’s play, A Raisin in the Sun, centers on an African American family in the late 1950s. Hansberry directs her work towards specifically the struggles faced by African Americans during the late 1950s. Through the dialogue and actions of her characters, she encourages not only a sense of pride in heritage, but a national and self-pride in African Americans as well.
By writing A Raisin in the Sun, which at the time was unlike any other piece of literature, Hansberry exercises her concept of the “Negro Artist” being important in regards to representation. The play shows the representation of African Americans and their culture through a wide variety of people (mothers, fathers, children, educated, uneducated, etc.) in a way that anyone outside of her background would not be able to understand—she does not focus on the stereotypes and the stigma. Through the specific characters, along with the overarching ideas emphasized by the dramaturgy, Hansberry fulfills what she sees is her “duty” as an African American writer—to look at the deep-rooted issues that society otherwise would not and portray the
A Raisin in the Sun, by Lorraine Hansberry, has often been dubbed a “black” play by critics since its debut on Broadway in 1959. This label has been reasonably assigned considering the play has a cast that consists primarily of African American actors; however, when looking beyond the surface of this play and the color of the author and characters, one can see that A Raisin in the Sun actually transcends the boundaries of racial labels through the universal personalities assigned to each character and the realistic family situations that continue to evolve throughout the storyline. As seen when comparing A Raisin in the Sun to “The Rich Brother,” a story for which the characters receive no label of race, many commonalities can be found between the characters’ personalities and their beliefs. Such similarities prove that A Raisin in the Sun is not merely a play intended to appeal only to the black community, nor should it be construed as a story about the plights of the black race alone, but instead should be recognized as a play about the struggles that all families, regardless of race, must endure in regard to their diversity and financial disparity. A succinct introduction and excellent writing!
While Nixon articulated the “widely shared belief” that suburbia “offered a piece of the American dream for everyone,” in New York, Lorraine Hansberry’s play, A Raisin in the Sun, offered a very different perspective (20). Set in post World War II Southside Chicago, Hansberry’s drama explores the conflict that arises within an African American family when Mama, the family's matriarch, receives a $10,000 life insurance settlement and spends a portion of it to buy a home in the restricted white neighborhood of Clybourne Park. However, Hansberry’s play not only highlighted the issue of housing segregation, but also fores...
During the 1960s, the African-American people were in racial situations due to their “lowered status”. They had no control over the strong beliefs in segregation, which “is characterized by a mixture of hope and despair.” (Nordholt) African-Americans, like normal people, had strived to achieve set goals. Unfortunately, their ethnicity was what inhibited them from accomplishing their dreams. In Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun, the author conveys the theme of the seemingly trivial efforts of the African-American people in their individual pursuits for a satisfactory life lead each person down a road of self-discovery that reveals an indefinite amount of truths, which transform their promising hopes into unachievable fantasies. By using powerful characterization, Hansberry creates characters with contrasting personalities dividing their familial hopes into different dreams. With the use of symbolism, each character’s road is shown to inevitably end in a state where dreams are deferred.
Lorraine Hansberry in her play, “Raisin in the Sun”, attempted to explain the feelings of the average African American Male in the 1940s. This persona, which is portrayed in the character Walter, had experienced a severe feeling of depression and hopelessness. In order to understand this source of grievance, one must relate back to the Great Migration and the dreams it promised and the reasons why many African Americans sought to move to the North. A desire to achieve freedom from racial injustices and poverty was the prime factor that encouraged Blacks to abandon the south. However, these dreams where soon crushed as African American noticed that Northern whites had still maintained unequal segregation and where as stumbling block to Black advancement. The consequences of a “dream deferred”, as Langston Hughes called it, was dependency on others, alcohol addiction, as well as dysfunctional families.
In America, every citizen is guaranteed life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Although each person is given these rights, it is how each person uses them that defines how successful they will be in America. There are several obstacles that some Americans face on their pursuit of happiness. In this country’s past, Americans lived by a very specific set of beliefs that valued the importance of hard work, faith, and family. As time progressed and America began to evolve as a nation, this capitalistic society no longer devoted itself to family and faith but rather success, and the pursuit of prosperity. The shift from dependence on tradition towards a society that values success and how people struggle to b successful when society makes it difficult marks a common theme in Lorraine Hansberry’s play, A Raisin in the Sun. Two of the main characters in this story Lena Younger (Mama) and her son Walter Lee directly reflect the shift from tradition to a focus on success and capital and the struggles they face in regards to racism. Mama and Walter Lee’s contrasting values about the American dream and the way in which they pursue their own dreams while facing racism exemplifies the shift from valuing tradition like in previous generations in America, to valuing success and prosperity like in more current generations.
It becomes obvious to the reader that the racial tension Hansberry experienced growing up reflected on the way her literature is written. Moss and Wilson state that, “Lorraine Hansberry’s South Side childhood, particularly her father’s battle to move into a white neighborhood, provided the background for the events in the play” (314). Hansberry experienced many of the situations she placed the Younger family at first hand. Hansberry’s father, Carl Hansberry, was put in a similar circumstance when he moved his family into a predominately white community at the opposition of the white neighbors. He eventually won a civil rights case on discrimination. Speaking of the United States, Adler states, “A Raisin in the Sun is a moving drama about securing one’s dignity within a system that discriminates against, even enslaves, its racial minorities” (824).
The play “A Raisin in the Sun” by Lorraine Hansberry illustrates an African American family receiving money from a deceased family member at the beginning of the play. When the Young family accepted this large amount of money, they moved into a house in an all white community in Chicago around 1950s. During this time period there were many social issues that were uprising. Some of these social issues are the following: racism, gender identity, and roles of women. These social issues are the ones which were explored in the play “A Raisin in the Sun”.
In Lorraine Hansberry's play A Raisin in the Sun, the author reveals a hard-working, honest African-American family struggling to make their dreams come true. Langston Hughes' poem, "Harlem," illustrates what could happen if those dreams never came to fruition. Together, both Hansberry and Hughes show the effects on human beings when a long-awaited dream is thwarted by economic and social hardships.