A Raisin In The Sun Literary Analysis

Themes are an essential part of any type of story, poem, or even play. Although these writings are of different genres each author used a type of literary element to show their various themes of deferred dreams, contrasting ideas of heritage, and longing for freedom. “A Raisin in the Sun” is a drama about a family that lived during the times of racism and how they struggled to make their dreams a reality. Lorraine Hansberry uses the literary element of symbolism to show her theme of deferred dreams. Hansberry uses Mama’s plant to symbolize her family. In the story Mama is always tending to her plant no matter how bad of shape it’s in. Just like her attentiveness to her plant, Mama is the same way with her divided family (De La Rosa). At one point in the story Mama talks about her plant needing plenty of sunshine so it can grow, just like her wilting family. Mama’s plant could also symbolize her conflicting relationship with her son, Walter. Just

In Alice Walker’s, “Everyday Use”, she uses imagery to prove her theme of contrasting ideas of heritage. This story tells about a family with very different views on their culture. Mama and Maggie live a simple life and honor their heritage while the oldest daughter, Dee has tried to abandoned hers altogether. One of the main events of the story is when Dee tells Mama that she wants the milk churn. Walker describes the churn as having old milk in it which shows the readers that it is frequently used by Mama and Maggie. Dee says that she isn’t sure what she will do with it but she wants it anyways which shows her disregard for her heritage. She also insists on taking the dasher. White points out that “she flippantly decides to take the churn dasher, even though she has no knowledge of its history.” The imagery used in this event in the story is crucial to the author’s theme of contrasting ideas of