Hansberry’s and King’s Dream for Equality
You do not fit in! You're the wrong color! Who do you think you are coming over here? What if you were told these things everyday? You were being pushed around just because you are a different color to the rest of the world? Lori Hansberry and Martin Luther King both experienced this throughout their life. In the novel, A Raisin in the Sun, by Lori Hansberry she tells a story of a working African American family, struggling to make days meet. In her book she shows the struggles a family went through, who were a different color than the majority. Her main theme in her book is hope given in dreams and the discrimination within the world. In the speech, I have a dream, by Martin Luther King Jr also shares
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the same themes. Both authors demonstrate that equality is for all people and the dreams of those who look different can become a reality. Lorraine Hansberry grew up in a little house on the southside of Chicago. She did not have the best environment while growing up, but was very optimistic about living with her conditions. Growing up she was a victim of racism and went through the struggles of being a working class african american during the 1950’s and 1960’s. Lorraine Hansberry proved that the saying ‘young gifted and black’ is true. She was the first African American to publish a play that was performed on Broadway.
Her book demonstrates to her readers the lifestyle and hardship of a middle class lifestyle, in the poorer parts of the city as an African American. Readers can deeply relate to her story, and say how each little movement of the characters and decision that they make can relate to a bigger social problem going on in the outside world during the 1950’ and 1960’s for an African American. A writer from the Theory and Practice in Language Studies, “ had been the victim of racism and had been familiar with the point it reflected on his race”. He was demonstrating, how deliberately the book, A Raisin in the Sun, painted a picture that others could relate too. Even today readers of the African American race can relate to the struggles and hardships of equality in certain aspects of their lives. The element Lorraine Hansberry did best in her writing, was she put her own stories and lifestyle into the book. Since she could connect to the characters a lot more, the characters began to grow deeper into the story. Hansberry applied the word “discrimination” to describe most of the story …show more content…
line. Martin Luther King Jr. grew up in a house shared by his grandparents and parents, in Atlanta, Georgia. King had a wonderful life growing up, until he started to go to school. Kids at school would bully him because he looked a different color than them. To the point where his friends parents would no longer let him come over and play. This is when his Mom taught him the history of slavery and segregation. When King hit high school, they would no longer let him sit on the bus to school, or communicate to him at any time. Over the next couple years, King had enough of the segregation coming back. King incorporated it into his speech. He tells the world that, “We refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt” and “Now is the time to make justice a reality for all of God’s children” (King ). He knows the rest of the world does not know that they are wrong, and there needs to be a change. He wanted freedom and equality for all. He wanted the world to come together in unity and become one nation. He tells the world they have forgotten that, “ a great American, in whose symbolic shadow we stand today, signed the Emancipation Proclamation” ( King ). We need to steer away from going back to the horrific times of slavery, and make America great anew. Both Hansberry and King assimilate their childhood into their works.
They both express the difficulty of living and growing up as an African American child. Lori Hansberry and Martin Luther King Jr both demonstrate the African American dream for America to reach one day. They play with the idea that although it is not reality, it's something their characters still hold onto very closely. Both stories just explain the idea of America to be free country again, and where they are able to do things whites do today. America would not be the same if people like Martin Luther King Jr, and Hansberry spoke out into the world. Today African Americans are treated better and kinder. Even some of the most famous people in the world are African American. Both authors portrayed to us, how important the dream was of one, and how America should respond to their cries for a change. Even today the world is not perfect. Look around in life, most cab drivers in today's American society are African American, and that is something Walter Lee Younger, in A Raisin in the Sun, most of all hated. All he ever wanted was to be able to be driven around, not to drive others for a change. King’s speech also makes a point, in today's world people still second guess whether they should share food with a person of a different race, or sit next to them on the bus or plane. Both of these authors wanted to make a change in this world, and even though there was little progress, America will not ever be
perfect. Even though both authors demonstrated the struggle of equality during their childhood, they never lost hope that their dreams could become a reality. American society is separating away from what they tried to established with their works. We need to come together as a nation once more to address the struggles of equality, and how we can make America a more tolerant nation again.
The issue of racism is one of the most significant themes in Lorraine Hansberry's A Raisin in the Sun.
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. It was not uncommon for African Americans to have a realistic view of the world during the beginning of the 1900s. Segregation played a major role in shaping the century.
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.
A Raisin in the Sun by Lorraine Hansberry is a dramatic play written in 1959. The play is about an African American family that lived on the Chicago South Side in the 1950’s. Hansberry shows the struggles and difficulties that the family encounters due to discrimination. Inspired by her personal experience with discrimination, she uses the characters of the play, A Raisin In The Sun, to show how this issue affects families. Hansberry faces housing discrimination due to her race, which affects her family.
How would you feel if your freedom was halted by the color of your skin? A Raisin in the Sun by Lorraine Hansberry and Langston Hughes’ poems both capture racial identity, pride, and dreams. Walter, a character in A Raisin in the Sun, relates to those in the poems of Hughes.
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.
I believe these two stories can be compared because they are both dealing with young black people trying to figure out why they are being discriminated just because of their skin color. They both feel like they should be just as free or equal as white people and not judged so harshly for being born black. They both are attending school during a rough time for colored people. They both just want to make a difference and make people realize that they are not bad people and that they are just as smart as white people. I would say that they both were very unlucky to be born colored during this time period because of the hatred but at the same time they are the ones who could have the biggest impact on changing lives and making it better for colored
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!
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 Lorraine Hansberry “A Raisin in the Sun”, the issues of racial discrimination, the debate of heroism, and criticism is vividly displayed. The play, which was written in the late 1950’s presents itself in a realistic discerning matter that implicates the racial division among the black family and white America. The play insinuates Walters’s heroism as well because of the black family’s struggle not to become discouraged in trying to obtain the world riches and still maintaining human dignity. When Hansberry wrote “A Raisin in the Sun”, many critics questioned the motive behind her play because it showed the America the world wants to grow oblivious to. This presents the reality of racial discrimination and heroism for the black man among
The story of “A Raisin in the Sun” is during a time where racism was still very alive and threatening to the African American race. A black family, the Younger’s is affected by this reality throughout the course of the play. Each family member is affected in a way uniquely their own. This essay will explore these occurrences and as a result what effect they have on the family.
In the end, both books explored the racism there was towards blacks and showed me no matter the race both share commonalities and I was also able to get some insight of a boy’s life growing up in the South. I was also able to identify some similarities and differences in Black Like Me and Black Boy. Besides showing the struggles faced both works showed some hope for a better future.
Lorraine Hansberry's A Raisin in the Sun is a play about segregation, triumph, and coping with personal tragedy. Set in Southside Chicago, A Raisin in the Sun focuses on the individual dreams of the Younger family and their personal achievement. The Younger's are an African American family besieged by poverty, personal desires, and the ultimate struggle against the hateful ugliness of racism. Lena Younger, Mama, is the protagonist of the story and the eldest Younger. She dreams of many freedoms, freedom to garden, freedom to raise a societal-viewed equal family, and freedom to live liberated of segregation. Next in succession is Beneatha Younger, Mama's daughter, assimilationist, and one who dreams of aiding people by breaking down barriers to become an African American female doctor. Lastly, is Walter Lee Younger, son of Mama and husband of Ruth. Walter dreams of economic prosperity and desires to become a flourishing businessman. Over the course of Walter's life many things contributed to his desire to become a businessman. First and foremost, Walter's father had a philosophy that no man should have to do labor for another man. Being that Walter Lee was a chauffeur, Big Walter?s philosophy is completely contradicted. Also, in Walter?s past, he had the opportunity to go into the Laundromat business which he chose against. In the long run, he saw this choice was fiscally irresponsible this choice was. In Lorraine Hansberry's A Raisin in the Sun, Walter Lee's dreams, which are his sole focus, lead to impaired judgement and a means to mend his shattered life.
The late 1950s was filled with racial discriminations. There was still sections living as well as public signs of Colored and Whites. Blacks and Whites were not for any change or at least not yet. A Raisin in the Sun, by Lorraine Vivian Hansberry, tells a story of a black family that is struggling to gain a middle class acceptance in Chicago. The family of five, one child and four adults live in a tiny apartment that is located in a very poor area. Dreams of owning a business and having money to accomplish goals is two key parts played out throughout the whole play. Walter Younger is determined to have his own business and he will go to ends met to see that dream come true. Financial bridges are crossed and obstacles arise when Walter makes a bad decision regarding money that could have help the family and not only himself, if he would have thought smarter. His pride and dignity are tested throughout the story and he is forced to setup for his family. The Raisin in the Sun helps readers to understand history of racial discrimination and how racial discrimination has an effect on the people in the late 1950s and early 1960s as well as how that has an effect on the characters within the play.