Mama’s plant in A Raison in the Sun, represents hope; hope for their future of having a house and a garden in the back. Mama is able to tend this dream plant and keep it alive even with the harsh atmosphere. When mama feels Walter and Beneatha are losing touch with her, she portrays her feelings through the dream plant, "Lord, if this little old plant don't get more sun than it's been getting, it ain't never going to see spring again" (40). This shows Mama truly believes that if Walter and Beneatha keep acting the way they do, they will not only ruin mama’s dream but also fail to initiate Big Walter’s legacy. Another piece of evidence that proves this, is when Ruth and Mama were talking about the now run-down house her and Big Walter used to
Lorraine Hansberry created the sense of feeling trapped in the character Mama. Mama feels trapped because she and her husband were never able to live out their dream. “I remember just as well the day me and Big Walter moved in here. Hadn’t been married but two weeks wasn’t planning on living here no more than a year” (Hansberry, 19). They planned to live in the little apartment just for a year to save up. “We were going to set away little by little, don’t you know, and buy a little place out in Morgan Park” (Hansberry, 19). Mama and Big Walter wanted to buy a house in a nice neighborhood after living the apartment for a while. The fact that they couldn’t move out and had to stay at the little apartment made mama feels trapped.
“A Raisin in the Sun” by Lorraine Hansberry, is a play about a black families experience in 1950s South Side Chicago. The story revolves around what happens to the family when Lena Younger, the matriarch of the family, receives a ten thousand dollar life insurance check upon the death of her husband. Everyone from the family has different plans for what they want to do with the money. Lena Younger serves as the head of the family. She is Walter and Beneatha’s caring mother so they and Ruth call her Mama.
Literary genius is a term thrown around often in this day and time. Many might say that the literary world has been diluted. However, if there is one who deserves that title, it is Alice Walker. It is especially so for her piece, ‘Everyday Use’. The short story was first published in 1973 as part of the author’s short story compilation. The collection was aptly named ‘In love and trouble’. The Pulitzer Prize winner uses the book to interrogate how black women deal with race identity and racism in the United States. This writer shall offer an analysis of the short story.
Mama watches over her family every day. In the play, when Ruth finds out that she is pregnant, Mama helps her. Mama doesn’t make Ruth panic, Mama just cares for her. In Act I, Travis needs 50 cents for school. Ruth tells him no, but Walter gives it to him along with another 50 cents for school. Later, Walter realizes that he needs the 50 cents. Walter gave up his money for his son. In order for the family to be nurturing, they must be understanding and be willing to step up for one another.
People have dreams to do or be what makes them happy by setting goals to reach their dream. Dreams are almost like goals that people create in their mind to try to motivate them self to achieve their dream. The American Dream is the idea that everyone who is a U.S. citizen should have an equal opportunity to be successful and benefit through their hard-work, determination, and initiative. In the play A Raisin in the Sun by Lorraine Hansberry, Beneatha Younger’s dream is to become a doctor and build a career/life for herself without anyone providing for her which connects to the American Dream through her independence, hard-work, and determination.
money. Mama, Walter’s mother and the head of the house, is put in the play to display family is greater than money. When the plot takes a direction change and the family receives insurance money from Mama’s dead husband, the attitude in the household shifts. Always being a family oriented woman, Mama, even with ten thousand dollars is still sad that her husband isn’t there to share the great fortune with him. This clearly displays Mama’s core values and why Lorraine Hansberry put her in the play to show these
A Raisin in the Sun is a play that addresses gender inequality through Beneatha and her experiences. Throughout what we see about her life, she thinks all men and women should be treated equal. These experiences that Beneatha goes through effects her life and her
Dee is a girl who lived with her mom and her sister Maggie, but she wasn’t like them at all, she was different than her sister and her mother. Mama was collecting money to take Dee to school in Augusta. Dee liked to be fashionable, she always wanted nice things.
In A Raisin in the Sun, a play written by Lorraine Hansberry, the audience was able to obtain a sense of the struggle for the American dream. We are introduced to the Youngerś a black family living in the Southside of Chicago around the 1950’s. Each member of this family has their own meaning to what is the American dream. A Raisin in the Sun teaches us that even though life might be full of conflicts, it is important to not give up on our dreams.
Family is important to everyone in some way because family sticks together no matter what. The play A Raisin in the Sun is about a black family named the Youngers and the hardships they face together as a family. In A Raisin in the Sun by Lorraine Hansberry, Ruth Younger is motivated by her family. This is shown by Ruth wanting to make her family happy, her working even though she is tired, and later when Ruth finds out there is going to be another mouth to feed.
Mama is an authentic feminist. She tells Beneatha that she have to conform to certain rules in the family “not long as [she is] the head of this family”. (Page 34). She wants to save her family from economic pressures which compels her children to cause resentments towards each other. Thus, she had “got to do something different… and do something bigger” (Page 71). She is clear- headed of what she wants. Although Lena is a woman of the 1950s, she is progressive. With the insurance money she received, she decides to buy a house in a white neighbourhood because she wants a better life for her family. Such a masculine personality in Mama comes from her experience to true oppression – slavery. Mama says that Walter is a “disgrace to [his] father’s memory” as she challenges Walter to fulfil his moral duty to succeed his father. Hence, A Raisin in the Sun play is feminist since it depicts the leadership of a woman who exerts control on the collective decisions for the family, when instead, a woman is stereotypically expected to be submissive to the men in the
“Symbolism is the use of symbols to signify ideas and qualities by giving them symbolic meanings that are different from their literal sense.” Symbols can add a deeper meaning than just an object itself that the author is trying to make.Symbols can also foreshadow what is yet to come. The audience can interpret a symbol in many ways it depends on their experience. In Southside Chicago the Younger family is struggling to have hope as they are always facing society.In the drama, A Raisin in the Sun, by Lorraine Hansberry the plant symbolizes the Younger’s dream as it evolves throughout the play.
She tells the story numerous times that she never planned on residing in the apartment for a long period of time, but intended on moving to a big house with a garden in the back (Act I, Scene I, 16). Through time, her dream deferred as many other things came up and her plant is as close as she ever had to a garden. Other than her own dreams, Mama knew that dreams were important to her family as well and the plant partly symbolized the hope that their dreams will never differ as hers had. There will always be hope for the family as long as the dreams, as well as the plant, stay alive and
In the play Raisin in the Sun written by Lorraine Hansberry takes place on the southside of Chicago where Walter and his family are racially profiled and show us how the survive throughout their struggles. The central struggles for the younger family in their search for the American dream is mostly poverty and being racially profiled against for their actions.