A Raisin In The Sun Character Analysis

The novel “To Kill A Mockingbird” was written in 1960 by Harper Lee in the point of view of a young innocent girl named Scout. One of the main messages that Lee has (need a new word than – indicated or set out) is racism, it plays an important role which strongly impacts many character’s lives unfairly and changes the relationship between two. Harper Lee’s “To Kill A Mockingbird” shows that it is wrong to hurt someone who does no harm to you, for example, black people are innocent but no way did they have as many rights as white people did. Black people lived hard lives because society was judgemental, irrational and most importantly, racist. As Scout and Jem grow older they learn to cope, take responsibility and are introduced to new aspects of life, one of which is racism.

The betterment of society as a whole is often reasonably prioritized over individual desire. However, it can harm individuality while seemingly compromising with it. In A Raisin in the Sun, author Lorraine Hansberry depicts individuals confronted by covert prejudice. In fact, most instances of prejudice in the play are masked in seeming selflessness and good intentions. The play follows the drama of the Younger family, an African-American family in the ‘50s that fights for their individual dreams that appear to be out-of-reach for their class and time.

As a civil rights activist, Stokely Carmichael once said, “We are told,” If you work hard, you’ll succeed”- but if that were true, black people would own the country. We are oppressed because we are black- not because we are ignorant, not because we are lazy, not because we are stupid, but because we are black!” This quote is still relevant even to this day, blacks are still considered a minority and they get treated differently simply because of the color of their skin. People continue to treat others by the color of their skin rather than their character. In Lorraine Hansberry’s play A Raisin in the Sun, the interaction between the themes of race and dreams demonstrates that your race can affect the dreams that you have and what you choose to do about it. Walter has a dream to own a liquor store so that he makes money from that business and is then is able to financially provide things for his family like he believes a man should, but him being blacks affects his dream.

Fences is a post-modernist play where the play writer has used the characters like Troy and Cory to show post- modernism. The play discusses the struggles faced by African Americans in the postmodern society. The way that Troy and other characters in the play dealt with the situations they were put into represents the post-modern ideals in the play by August Wilson. Troy is trapped in discrimination because he is an African American. He had lots of flaws.

After all, for some educated white and black folks, black minstrelsy was seen as a disgrace that reinforced stereotypes to mock and oppress black persons. To abate this, Chappelle placed emphasis on the plot and quality of the all-black Rabbit’s Foot Company. A 1904 ad in The Afro American Ledger states that the Rabbit’s Foot Company was “the only genuine Negro company that really has a plot, and owned and managed and controlled by Negroes.” Additionally, this ad regards the “genuine dialects” of the performers. Almost necessarily, Chappelle desired to undermine the racist establishment of the minstrel show by repurposing it as a wholly black endeavor from an authentic perspective. As a result, Chappelle assured during the 1904 season that his show was not “a plotless ramble, made up if threadbare jokes, songs and imperfect imitations of what has been aired to dryness by some other company.” As this comment signifies, the performances of the Rabbit’s Foot Company were not the minstrelsy of discrimination but evolved into black vaudeville of entertaining value and substance.

“A Raisin in the Sun,” written by Lorraine Hansberry in 1959, was the first play ever produced on Broadway by an African-American woman and was considered ground-breaking for it’s time. Titled after Langston Hughes’ poem “Harlem,” sometimes known as “A Dream Deferred,” the play and the subsequent film adaptations are honest examinations of race, family, poverty, discrimination, oppression and even abortion in urban Chicago after WWII. The original play was met with critical praise, including a review by Brooks Atkinson of the New York Times where he wrote, “For A Raisin in the Sun is a play about human beings who want, on the one hand, to preserve their family pride and, on the other hand, to break out of the poverty that seems to be their fate. Not having any axe to grind, Miss Hansberry has a wide range of topics to write about-some of them hilarious, some of them painful in the extreme.” The original screen adaptation released in 1961 was highly acclaimed in its own right, and was chosen in 2005 for preservation in the United States of America National Film Registry by the Library of Congress for its cultural and historical significance. While both stage and screen portrayals were highly acclaimed there are some similarities as well as some marked differences in each interpretation.

Faulkner describes black people by a derogatory term “negro” to emphasize the main issue of the southern mentality. However, author pays the equal attention to gender inequality. Starting from the very beginning Faulkner describes Emily’s unquestionable obedience towards the constraints that her father put on her life. Emily is the symbol of old American south, yet her character has a lot in common with women of younger generation “Only a man of Colonel Satoris’s generation could have invented it and only a women could have believed it” (Faulkner), it is not women’s competence to think by themselves; the statement that Faulkner wants make in this part is that men are superior gender. As the story goes on, Faulkner describes Emily’s death: “When Miss Emily Grierson died the whole town went to her funeral: the men out of respectful affection for a fallen monument and the women mostly out of curiosity” (Faulkner).

August wilson's play Joe Turner's Come and Gone is a powerful play that portrays the experience of slavery in the past of African Americans society. This play strongly shows life of black Americans through several different characters, which can be seen as a one whole community of theirs. A clear picture is shown of how they had to fight in order to regain their existence and real identity(not as slaves) in the real world society. So, in the play, Joe Turner’s Come and Gone, August Wilson presents a few subject matter of displacement, racial discrimination and pursuit of identity. This play does not exactly falls exactly into one particular single genre of drama , but the best we can say is that it is a hybrid of Tragedy, Melodrama,Comedy and Farce.

Racism in A Raisin in the Sun A Raisin in the Sun reflects life in Southside Chicago during the 1950’s. Racism still occurred during this time period and viewed as a common way of living. The Younger’s were an African American family who were treated no different than the rest of the black community, inhumanely. This play portrays the common struggled faced by African Americans who seek nothing more than to better their lives and to truly have an opportunity to acquire the American Dream. In A Raisin in the Sun, the usage of symbolism, imagery, and characterization, are promoted throughout the play to assist the demonstration of how racism can completely affect a family.

Without critical analysis, this play can be seen as just a potrayal of the struggles black families, had to endure in the 1950 's, just so they can escape the ghettos in Chicago. In any case, complex characters, and Various topics were incorporated, that needed numerous levels of dissection past the essential issues that the plot was guided by. The excellence of Raising in the Sin is that it depicts the self-hood, societal position, racial difficulties of African American, and in concurrence with the complexities of all inclusive human