Winston Churchill, the former British Prime Minster, once said that America “stands at the summit of the world”, and by the late 1950s it is easy to see why he came to this conclusion. Prospering economically after the end of WWII, many cities around the United States began to grow exponentially. This marked the beginning of the period known as the baby boom, in which over 70 million babies were born. Though there was much prosperity found thought the United States in the 1950s, African-Americans, and other minority groups faced many obstacles when trying to pursue their dreams. Tired of oppression and discrimination the 1950s also marked the new beginning of the African-American Civil Rights Movement. During this time, many rose and challenged racial barriers while doing so new ideologies about life began to surface. Writers of the time tried to capture the intense feeling and emotions of the African-American people by creating thoughtful literary works. In Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun, even though all of the charters view life from different perspectives they all find common ground in the strength of family.
Every family needs someone who is willing to make sacrifices for the greater good of the family so that basic day to day life is able to continue smoothly. Hansberry’s character Ruth accurately depicts someone who carries these unique
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In times of need most people will most likely turn to their family for assistance. In Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun the dynamics of family are seen constantly. The characters who share an uqnine views on the meaning of life are all able to realize the role their family plays in influencing them. Hansberry uses the characters as vessels for the real life African American who faced challenges when trying to pursue their dreams. This stylish use of allusion makes A Raisin in the Sun a prominent literary piece of the
I also find that the characters in A Raisin in the Sun are over exaggerating the situation they are in given the archetypal standards they represent. Each character is representation of something generational, a gender or race issue, and it's a testament to Hansberry's writing that the characters don't come across as mouthpieces for the story. They are living, breathing human beings. It's not impossible at all to imagine the Younger family crowded together in their tiny roach-infested apartment on the south side of Chicago struggling, striving, and dreaming. “Who the hell told you you had to be a doctor?
In the novel A Raisin In The Sun, Lorraine Hansberry brings in multiple characters for brief periods. Each character impacts the story in his or her own specific way. In Hansberry’s realistic fiction novel, she allows the reader to experience what it is like to live in a time period where African Americans and Whites are not considered equals. She gives in depth scenarios, showing what it is truly like to be an African American in Chicago during the 1950’s. The characters in the story experience a multitude of issues involving society, culture, and family.
“It takes courage to grow up and become who you really are”-e. e. Cumming. In the book A Raisin in the Sun, Lorraine Hansberry writes about a black family living in the 1950’s in Chicago. During this time there were many racist people. Beneatha Younger, an ambitious, resilient, selfish young woman treated like a child by her family.
During the 1950s in Chicago blacks were in poverty. The city was filled with discrimination, racism and segregation. The Younger family was a black family living in a one bedroom apartment in Chicago at the time. They had big dreams but lack of money. In the play, A raisin in the sun, Lorraine Hansberry created the central idea of “feeling trapped” in the character Mama through the setting, symbolism, and figurative language.
The setting of the Raisin in the Sun is the ghetto of Chicago, where most black families lived and most of these black families had dreams of moving to a better neighbourhood, because of crime, but the housing industry causes segregated housing and manipulates communities with white fears of black integration. When Lorraine Hansberry was a child, her family also experienced the results of a government unconcerned with blacks leaving segregation. Lorraine used her play to tell people about her own struggle with racism, her play shows us that her problems were handled with determination. Linder speaks to the Younger family and offers them money to buy their house, because they, the white people feel that a community should share a common background and that negro families are happier when they live in their own communities. This is an example of how the Younger family has experienced racism, while it is true that people with the same background will be happier together, it is also their right to live where they feel they are progressing.
“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.
A Raisin in the Sun was an innovative play for its era. Lorraine Hansberry produces in the Younger household one of the first authentic portrayals of a black household on an American stage, in an era where primarily black spectators just didn’t exist. African-American characters, typically minor and comedic, mostly hired racial stereotypes before this play. Lorraine Hansberry, nevertheless, displays a whole black household in an authentic view, one that is unbecoming and anything but comedic. She makes use of black dialect all through the play and raises significant concerns and struggles, for instance poverty, bigotry and racism.
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. Ruth Younger is constantly worrying about her family’s well being and happiness for them.
Historical Analysis: A Raisin in the Sun is a play about the author’s life. The segregation life and the event of moving into a white neighborhood are events from the life of Lorraine Hansberry, the author. The events that occurred in the play along with real life events relate to the Civil Rights Movement and feminist topics. Lorraine Hansberry moved into an all white neighborhood just like the Younger family moved into Clybourne Park. The author did not modify the major events of her own life but rather added a series of complications and details to fit the play such as the event of Walter losing the investment money.
A Raisin in the Sun addresses major social issues such as racism and feminism which were common in the twentieth century. The author, Lorraine Hansberry, was the first playwright to produce a play that portrayed problematic social issues. Racism and gender equality are heavily addressed throughout the play. Even though we still have these issues today, in the 1950’s and 60’s the issues had a greater part in society. Racism and gender have always been an issue in society, A Raisin in the Sun is an important piece of American history during that time period.
Through the use of the historical lens, looking specifically at the economic struggles, the struggle of unequal opportunity, and the housing covenant that African-American’s faced in the 1950’s, Hansberry’s message of A Raisin in the Sun is revealed: the perseverance of an ethnic minority in a time of racial discrimination. A Raisin in the Sun is set in a time of great racial discrimination, the 1950’s in the united States. This featured racism towards those of color or non-caucasians, and the struggles commonly faced by the African-American family is shown through the eyes of the Younger family through the writing and experiences of Lorraine Hansberry. Of the three major struggles the Younger family faced, the most prominent in Act one is that of financial disability. This is best shown through the working lives of the family.
Introduction Lorraine Hansberry’s “A Raisin in the Sun” led a great quest for the Younger household. Raisin is set in subsidized housing in Southside Chicago, in which three Black female relatives live and interact with their brother, husband, and son Walter. African Americans were frowned upon before the writing of “A Raisin in the Sun”. However, it her notorious story provided individuals of multiple races new hope for life. In 2006, Diana Adesola Mafe provided the world with her opinion of “A Raisin in the Sun”.
In Susan Lorraine Hansberry’s play A Raisin in the Sun, the themes identified are dreams and faith that each character signifies throughout their struggles in their daily lives. The theme dreams refer to how each of the main five characters: Ruth Younger, Walter Lee Younger, Travis Younger, Beneatha Younger, and Lena Younger dealt with different oppression situations that took part in their lives that put the dreams on hold. Furthermore, the theme also connects towards the faith that each main character had to pursue to keep their family together after the death of a love one. The characters’ in A Raisin in the Sun tries to chase after a separate dream, unfortunately their dreams are utterly pushed away to realize the importance of their family
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.