Walter Younger In Lorraine Hansberry's A Raisin In The Sun

Walter Younger, husband, father, and son, all around just a man who struggles to continue living the poverty stricken life he has become so accustomed to, and who seeks to change the future of he and his family for the better. Though while his intentions may be in the right place, his means of achieving these goals are less than reputable. His desire for wealth more than often clouds his judgement causing his selfish behavior and rash decisions, which only leads to the opposite of what he is trying to accomplish. He believes his actions will go according to plan and all he has thought out will come to fruition, however, his high hopes and overconfidence in himself are what will inevitably bring him down. Walter is a selfish man who is persistent in his goal of obtaining money in hopes to have a better life and this persistence impairs his ability to be a good son, husband, and father. Once he learns to appreciate family, he can change as a person.
Following the death of his father, Walter’s mother received life insurance benefits that came to about ten thousand dollars. Seeing as the money came as a result from the death of her recently deceased husband, Lena and/or Mama is troubled when it comes to how to use it, whereas Walter sees an opportunity to take it for himself and open a liquor store,

which he believes is the best course of action for his family. Like her son, Mama seeks the best for her family, although Walter doesn’t seem to recognize the right and wrong within his actions and does not seem to think about the long term effects of his actions.
With the insurance money used on the liquor store, Beneatha misses out on the education she wants and needs in order to pursue her dreams. Beneatha also seeks a better future for her family but also herself, and her dream of becoming a doctor is how she will go about improving her own life. With the benefits spent on the liquor store, she may not know whether or not she’ll be able to achieve the goal she has set for herself. Mama knows her son’s heart is in the right place, but, his own interests get in the way of the bigger picture and that is his family and what is really best for them, and it isn't a liquor store. They all need something that will benefit them all simultaneously and that’s what Mama will seek to do, not use it for her own investments.
Walter is blinded by his ambition, his judgement is clouded as a result and his beliefs of right and wrong is virtually nonexistent during this period of greed. He is bent on obtaining the money to use for his own purposes which he truly believes is the path he should put his family on in order to be happy. Although he also refuses to see the error of his ways and his arrogance leads to failure and his failure leads to even worse decisions. Once he feels as though what he’s doing isn’t what he wants, Walter is overwhelmed and disappointed with himself leading to drinking and misery. He sets his hopes very high and leaves too much trust within people with who aren’t who they seem to be.
Though he may have set himself and family on a difficult road and made mistakes, Walter Younger learned from his errors that wealth and an abundance thereof is not the way to happiness and life improvement.

Through troubling times and an overwhelming sense of responsibility he was able to overcome his imperfections and better himself and his mentality for the benefit of himself and his family. Mama had tried to remind Walter of the man his father was and how he could learn from him, and after a long journey and the loss of the money, he was finally able to set aside his personal interests and have the realization he so desperately needed to become the man he needed to

be.