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A Raisin In The Sun Critical Lens Essay

1375 Words6 Pages

Oliver Fredrick
Ms. Coen
Advanced English 9
May 8th 2023
The Analysis Walter Lee and Prometheus

How far are people willing to fall to achieve their dreams? This question of life is vital to understand people. The fullest expression of what people will do to grasp their goals is best shown in the play A Raisin in the Sun by Loraine Hansberry. Loraine Hansberry is an American author from Chicago who was well known for how immersive she would write dialogue and families, giving both a full range of emotions. In the play, readers are introduced to Walter Lee a father of one who lives in a cramped and run-down apartment with his wife, sister, mother, and son. In the play, A Raisin In The Sun by Loraine Hansberry, the character of Walter Lee is …show more content…

Walter’s faults are abundant and they range from his disregard for the feelings of others to his inability to let others achieve their dreams without his help these faults are nearly identical to Prometheus’s when one looks into their stories. The scars of men and gods are seen clearly in the Theogony by Hesiod with many different stories in the work displaying this. But no quote better summarises these faults than “he [Prometheus] had made the beautiful evil to be the price for the blessing”(Hesiod 585). This quote refers to how Prometheus gave up his brother for Zeus to torture using Pandora by not warning his brother, knowing if he gets punished that Zeus will come for his brother. The evidence of Prometheus’s willingness to let others suffer just because he is suffering correlates with how Walter Lee handles Mr. Lindner. Mr. Lindner is a character in A Raisin in the Sun that tries to prevent Walter Lee and his family from moving into a neighborhood that is against the idea of anyone moving in that isn’t a rich, white, Christian family that fits their perception of acceptable. So Mr. Lindner offers a Faustian deal of trading the pride of the family for money and originally Walter Lee is against it like the rest of his family. But the second that he loses what he wants he reconsiders the deal with no regard for his family and what they …show more content…

In A Raisin in the Sun Walter Lee loses all the money he supposes to put toward his family and is presented with a choice where he can get the money back but costs the whole family their house and dreams or he and his family can move into their new house but be broke and in a dangerous environment where they have already been threatened with violence. In comparison, Prometheus is presented with another impossible choice he can either let mankind live without fire, suffer from the lack of warmth and not being if the food they eat is safe or he can steal fire knowing he would take some blame and that a different and hopefully better punishment for mankind would be instore. But the difference between the chosen choices is who weighed in on it in the case of Prometheus he could have consolidated in his brother or sought out his friend Athena but he instead decided the fate of man without counsel which leads to us getting greed, envy, hatred, pain, disease, hunger, poverty, war, and death but still maintaining hope but this choice also leads to Prometheus getting chained to a rock and forever getting his liver ripped out and regrown. But in the case of Walter even though he tried to keep his family out of it he eventually took in the

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