The Significance of a Title

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Essay Question: How is the title of the two plays, A Raisin in the Sun by Lorraine Hansberry and the Piano Lesson by significant? Compare the interpretation of the title and the actual moral to the play.

The Significance of a Title

The title of stories, poems, or plays may be significant in many ways. It may be a clue to the moral of the story or even a symbol of something very important in the text. In the play the Piano Lesson, you can clearly grab the meaning from the word lesson; a lesson given by a teacher to play an instrument such as a piano in this case. But then again, it can go the other way around; the lesson which the piano teaches. In this play, the piano is a symbol which causes problems and pleasure. The actual meaning is the piano teaching a lesson. The piano holds the history and shows the past suffering of the Charles family. In the play, A Raisin in the Sun, an actual meaning cannot be derived so easily like the Piano Lesson. When I first compared the title and it’s moral considering the story’s plot, I thought the money symbolized the check they were planning on receiving and the raisin symbolizing the Youngers who seems to be little just like a raisin since they were poor and didn’t have much. Then when I when I read the poem A dream Deferred by Langston Hughes, I realized that the raisin served as the dreams certain characters in the play having and whether it would have a good or bad outcome. Will their dream work and prosper or will it start slow and go downhill? The title shows the struggles of the Younger family and how each individual dreams were different and how it developed. In the Piano Lesson, there was a family named the Sutters who bought the Charles family as slaves. Mr. Sutter could no...

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...t finally went away. Boy Willie finally realized the value of the piano and decided to leave.

In A Raisin in the Sun, there is a poor family named the Youngers who struggle everyday of their lives. It is around the time where slavery is over but very racial. Luck comes along when Mama Lena receives a ten thousand dollar life insurance check from her husbands death. At Mama Lena’s residence there is her daughter Beneatha and son Walter. They both have their own dreams and plans on what to do with the money. Waltes who resides at Mama Lena with his wife and son plans to invest in a liquor store. On the other hand, Lena’s daughter Beneatha plans to invest the money in medical school which she is estatic to attend after finishing her college years. Mama Lena also has plans for the money which is to invest in a house for her family and send Beneatha to medical school.

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