Lorraine Hansberry's A Raisin In The Sun

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Now adays symbols define a lot of our everyday objects, for example, gender symbols or company logos. Symbolism is the use of symbols to show ideas. One book that uses symbolism is the drama based play written by Lorraine Hansberry named “Raisin in The Sun”. This book is about a poor black family in South Chicago during the 50’s called the Youngers. The Younger Family gets a $10,000 dollar insurance settlement. Unfortunately $6,500 is lost to an investment with a man named Willy Haris, over a liquor store, but $3,500 is put into a down payment purchasing a house in clybourne park. Throughout the story the author uses symbolism in 3 different ways, the windows represented opportunities, the light represented hope and the plants represented dreams. …show more content…

That in turn means symbolically has it has more opportunities for success. Naturally it shows how the amount of windows is connected to their the younger family’s opportunities. Secondly, symbolism was used throughout the book to describe light as hope. Light is shown in the old apartment to be vague, which is talked about on page 24 ”At the window, she Kaleb 2 raises the shade and a dusky Southside morning light comes in feebly”. This lack of light is representing the younger’s hope, struggling to stay alive in their environments. On the other hand the new house is described by Mama on page 94“there’s a whole lot of sunlight” which is symbolically telling us that the state of their hope has improved 10 fold because of the new house change. Lastly, symbolism is used in the book through Mama’s plant, this being the dream of her family having happiness. It’s shown when the family is struggling the plant gets tended to. For example on page 40, when Mama is talking to the rest of the family, she says”Lord,if this little old plant don’t get more sun than its been getting it ain’t never going to see spring again” this represents how the family won’t survive if something doesn't

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