How Is Walter Presented In A Raisin In The Sun

Ashley Clark
Sawyer
English 11
11/2/2016
Mama & Walter
Todays generations of kids and adults all come from a widely diverse community. Generations may evolve over times, but the same problems that people experience in the past continue on through everyone living today. Much like Mama in "A Raisin in the Sun", she was raised in an era where respect meant using manners, treating elders and authority with respect was second hand and growing up and becoming a man or women was a crucial part of life. Walter doesn’t have a grasp on what "growing up" and becoming an adult is. Two contradicting people create a soulful story through the growth and development of Mama and Walters’s relationship.
In Scene One, Act One, Walter takes a cigarette from his wife Ruth's pack and places the filter in between his lips. Walter lights the cigarette and menacingly staring out the window says, "Just look at em down there... Running and Racing to work..." (Hughes, Pg. 8). Walter does not place high priority in finding a job, or perhaps that he is too immature to carry one. This fact alone puts extreme tension between Mama and Walters’s relationship from the beginning. Mama implies that Walter is immature and untrustworthy.

Later in the story Walter comes up with an idea that he believes will end the families’ problems and create an escape from the life of poverty.

Walter was left money from his fathers insurance. Wanting to invest his fathers’ money into a liquor store Mama opposed saying, “I don't want that on my ledger this late in life" (Hughes, Pg. 16). Her better half eventually gave Walter some of the inheritance money to Walter and foolishly, Walter loses it. Living in his mothers’ house with his Wife and Son, Walter wants to be "The man of the house". Add poverty and being treated like a child as a man, can ruin a persons life, ability to adapt, overcome and to better themselves and

family.
Mama finally realized that for Walter to succeed she needed to show him support. She says to Beneatha, Walters’s sister, "When do you think the time to love someone is." (Hughes, Pg. 86). Showing Walter support, he was able to make the most substantial decision of his life. When Mr. Lindner returned with his offer Mama made the smart decision of having Travis stay with her. It is that exact reason Walter did not take the offer. Thus, Mama finally realized to get through to Walter was to see the consequences of his actions through his son Travis.
The beginning of Act 1 you could see that there was stress and tension through the family. It also affected each person’s relationships with one another. As time progressed will, hope, discipline and failure all became substantial parts in Walters success. Not only his success, but the relationship within the families; they improved. A great man once said "If you fall down, get back up and keep going". In the end it didn’t matter how many times Walter failed because himself and everyone around him got back up and kept moving forward.