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Gender Roles In A Raisin In The Sun

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Just within the recent decades, men and women started to fight against the gender stereotypes and started to challenge their roles in a family and in the society. The play, A Raisin in the Sun, portrays the lives of African–Americans during the 1950s. Lorraine Hansberry, a writer and a social activist, reinforced the traditional gender roles, especially female’s, by depicting how the Youngers interact and how they act in an economical struggle. Throughout the play, A Raisin in the Sun, she uses Walter Lee Younger, Ruth Younger and Lena Younger to reinforce the traditional role of fathers, wives and mothers within a family. Hansberry portrays the role of fathers within their families through her only male character in the play, Walter Lee Younger. She stresses the fact that the role of fathers is to be a role model for his child. Fathers influence their children significantly especially their sons. Boys will model themselves after their dads since they look at fathers’ behaviors and recognize those behaviors as successful (Gross). As a father, Walter believes that he is not a qualitative role model to his son, Travis Younger. When he tries to persuade Ruth to persuade Lena, also known as Mama, to give him money so he could invest in a liquor store, he narrates how unsuccessful his life is. “I’m thirty-five years old; I been married eleven years and I got a boy sleeping in the living room” (Hansberry 495). Since he mentions Charlie Atkins who made a hundred thousand for a

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