Who Is Mama In A Raisin In The Sun

820 Words2 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: Manifestations of racism in the Raisin in the sun

A Raisin in the Sun is a thoughtful and realistic play that brings into consideration an African-American family that struggles for equality within a mainstream society and how their different dreams differed under pressure of both racism and prejudice. The author talks about “the Younger” to highlight the theme but not only championing the relationship between the family members but also the inherent conflicts. However, among the five family members, the most conspicuous character is Mama due to forces, nature and personality difference. Thus, the aim this review is to analyze Mama’s personality. The most evident thing is that Mama appreciates her family, and has a sense of motherhood. This means that she loves her family in a kinder version and in a positive manner. Mama has numerous dreams for the family, and the most evident is the aim moving from poverty into a live that meets some of their needs without the kind of struggle that they have. Mama wants her family to move to an improved house, and to champion the values of …show more content…

For example, some questions that she asks her daughter includes when is the most appropriate moment to love somebody the most is it when the person has done good and ensures that things are easier for everybody. Mama tells her daughter that the most appropriate time is someone is at her or his lowest moments when they cannot believe in themselves because the world has whipped them. This view is elaborated in the manner Mama feels about the plant. Mama knows that the plant can survive through all difficulties ranging from its lowest moment to when it is withered, and the family can take similar stance. Doubled with motherly love, Mama gives unconditional love to her family whatever the circumstances resulting in a situation that Beneatha sees strengths of her brother, Walter, even though he had let her down

Show More
Related

  • Family Relationships: Sonny Blues by James Baldwin and I Stand Here Ironing by Tillie Olsen

    899 Words  | 2 Pages

    Although, a mother’s determination in the short story “I Stand Here Ironing” mother face with an intense internal conflict involving her oldest daughter Emily. As a single mother struggle, narrator need to work long hours every day in order to support her family. Despite these criticisms, narrator leaves Emily frequently in daycare close to her neighbor, where Emily missing the lack of a family support and loves. According to the neighbor states, “You should smile at Emily more when you look at her” (Olsen 225). On the other hand, neighbor gives the reader a sense that the narrator didn’t show much affection toward Emily as a child. The narrator even comments, “I loved her. There were all the acts of love” (Olsen 225). At the same time, narrator expresses her feeling that she love her daughter. Until, she was not be able to give Emily as much care as she desire and that gives her a sense of guilt, because she ends up remarrying again. Meanwhile narrator having another child named Susan, and life gets more compli...

    Read More

  • The Significance of Lena Younger’s Dream Plant in A Raisin in the Sun

    628 Words  | 2 Pages

    In the story A Raisin in the Sun Lena Younger cares for a small house plant. This plant represents dreams. Mama has dreams for her family to rise from poverty and live in a better and bigger place, and also for them to continue to grow together as a family.

    Read More

  • Suffering and Surviving in James Baldwin's Sonny's Blues

    1464 Words  | 3 Pages

    Mama, as a member of an older generation, represents the suffering that has always been a part of this world. She spent her life coexisting with the struggle in some approximation to harmony. Mama knew the futility of trying to escape the pain inherent in living, she knew about "the darkness outside," but she challenged herself to survive proudly despite it all (419). Mama took on the pain in her family in order to strengthen herself as a support for those who could not cope with their own grief. Allowing her husband to cry for his dead brother gave her a strength and purpose that would have been hard to attain outside her family sphere. She was a poor black woman in Harlem, yet she was able to give her husband permission for weakness, a gift that he feared to ask for in others. She gave him the right to a secret, personal bitterness toward the white man that he could not show to anyone else. She allowed him to survive. She marveled at his strength, and acknowledged her part in it, "But if he hadn't had...

    Read More

  • Essay Outline for Conflict in Lorraine Hansberry's A Raisin in the Sun

    521 Words  | 2 Pages

    B. Mama vs. Walter - Mama's desires for the family contrast with Walter's. Mama wants to use the insurance money to buy a house, a symbol of stability. Walter would rather spend the money on a high risk investment. Mama represents the wiser generation.

    Read More

  • Mama In Everyday Use

    878 Words  | 2 Pages

    Even though Mama is a strong woman, there are many flaws. Not so much with her, but more so with her family. Her youngest daughter Maggie was burned in a house fire, which has left her broken and battered. Mama really talks down about Maggie, but it’s all true, she says “Have you ever seen a lame animal,

    Read More

  • The Ideal Mother in A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini

    708 Words  | 2 Pages

    What does an ideal mother do? In the novel A Thousand Splendid Suns, by Khaled Hosseini, the ideal of mother is described. In the story two mothers, Nana and Mariam, are showed as the model of a perfect mother. Through Nana and Mariam, Hosseini shows that an ideal mother must be willing to sacrifice, must do her best to ensure their children’s survival, and be able to utilize tough love. Throughout the book both moms are constantly sacrificing to make their children’s life better.

    Read More

  • Keeping the Family Together in A Raisin In The Sun

    906 Words  | 2 Pages

    What a loving mother! Lena Younger, or Mama, is nurturing and supportive when it comes to raising and maintaining a family. Personally speaking, being nurturing means to love, care for, and show concern over someone. Analyzing Mama’s relationships with family members can show us her view on parenting and ultimately show us her devotion to her family. In A Raisin in the Sun, by Lorraine Hansberry, Mama is a nurturing mother who cares for and protects her family in her struggle to keep them unified.

    Read More

  • The Change Of Mama's Identity In Purple Hibiscus

    60 Words  | 1 Pages

    In Purple Hibiscus, Mama has limits to what she can do. The effects of these limitations are the behavior shown throughout the story. When Adichie writes about Mama's development throughout the story, it goes to show how certain events can either drastically change a person's identity or show no change at all. Therefore, Adichie shows the change of Mama's identity

    Read More

  • An Overview of 'A Raisin in the Sun'

    1747 Words  | 4 Pages

    A Raisin in the Sun is a play telling the story of an African-American tragedy. The play is about the Younger family near the end of the 1950s. The Younger family lives in the ghetto and is at a crossroads after the father’s death. Mother Lena Younger and her grown up children Walter Lee and Beneatha share a cramped apartment in a poor district of Chicago, in which she and Walter Lee's wife Ruth and son Travis barely fit together inside.

    Read More

  • The Character of Mama in Alice Walker’s Everyday Use

    936 Words  | 2 Pages

    “I am a large, big boned woman with rough, man-working hands” Mama describes of herself in the short story Everyday Use by Alice Walker. Mama, who additionally takes the role of narrator, is a lady who comes from a wealth of heritage and tough roots. She is never vain, never boastful and most certainly never selfish. She speaks only of her two daughters who she cares deeply for. She analyzes the way she has raised them and how much she has cared too much or too little for them, yet most of all how much they value their family. Mama never speaks of herself, other than one paragraph where she describes what she does. “My fat keeps me hot in zero weather. I can work outside all day, breaking ice to get water for washing” (Walker, 60). She does not need to tell readers who she is, for her descriptions of what she does and how her family interacts, denotes all the reader needs to know. Although Mama narrates this story rather bleakly, she gives readers a sense of love and sense of her inner strength to continue heritage through “Everyday Use”.

    Read More

  • A Raisin in the Sun: The Foundation of Family

    1191 Words  | 3 Pages

    Walter and Beneatha’s relationship is very complex. The spiraling tension between the two siblings causes confrontation to form and creep into the Younger household. Walter needs his family to respect him as the man of the family, but his sister is constantly belittling him in front of his mother, wife, and son. This denigrating treatment taints Walter’s view of himself as a man, which carries into his decisions and actions. Beneatha also subconsciously deals with the dysfunctional relationship with her brother. She desires to have her brother’s support for her dream of becoming a doctor, yet Walter tends to taunt her aspiration and condemns her for having such a selfish dream. Mama as the head of the family is heartbroken by the juvenile hostility of her adult children, so in hopes to keep her family together she makes the brave move of purchasing a house. Mama’s reasoning for the bold purchase was,“ I—I just seen my family falling apart….just falling to pieces in front of my eyes…We couldn’t have gone on like we was today. We was going backwards ‘stead of forw...

    Read More

  • Generational Differences In A Raisin In The Sun

    782 Words  | 2 Pages

    Differences in generations can cause people to have different viewpoints in life. A Raisin In The Sun is a play set in the 1950s written by Lorraine Hansberry. The Youngers are a black family who lives in a cramped apartment in the South Side of Chicago. When Mama receives a check of insurance money, members of the family are divided in their own hopes of what it will be used for. Mama, Ruth, and Beneatha are the three women of the Younger household and their generational differences clearly show through their actions. The difference between generations is why Mama is the most devout, Ruth is an agreeable person, and Beneatha is outspoken and has modern views.

    Read More

  • Gloria Naylor's Mama Day

    1235 Words  | 3 Pages

    Mama Day is filled with situations in which the theme of multiplicity of perception arises. Various types of readers can interpret these situations in ways they feel are appropriate, just as different characters tend to have different perceptions of things based on their own values and ways of thinking. The important thing is that the reader does not forget that there is, in fact, more than one way to view these situations, and ignoring any one of them can take away from the worth of the book.

    Read More

  • Walter Lee's Dreams in A Raisin in The Sun

    1409 Words  | 3 Pages

    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.

    Read More

  • The Role of Mama in A Raisin in the Sun

    1004 Words  | 3 Pages

    Mama is a powerful, strong witted person. She has a lot of control in this play and dominates as a woman character. This is unusual because this is usually a male’s position in life. She is a woman, “who has adjusted to many things in life and overcome many more, her face is full of strength”. In this play she is illustrated as taking over for the head of the family and controls the lives of everyone in her house. Rules are followed to Mama’s extent. She controls what is said and done in her house. After Walter yells, “WILL SOMEBODY PLEASE LISTEN TO ME TODAY!” (70). Mama responds in a strong tone of voice saying, “I don’t ‘low no yellin’ in this house, Walter Lee, a...

    Read More

More about Who Is Mama In A Raisin In The Sun

Open Document