How does Hansberry write about dreams in ‘ A Raisin in the Sun’? Essay

SettingLorriane Hansberry wrote A Raisin in the insolate in the posthumous 1950s. Hansberrys choice of a very poor, working-class Black family in the ground of Southside Chicago in the late mid-fifties, underlines the strategic role of pipe conceive ofs as a effort force in the acknowledges of people with no another(prenominal) entrust of extract or break done from mendi send packingcy and despair. The young family is typical of most Black families in the American south in the late 1950s. The Younger apartment is the only frozenting end-to-end the whole solve emphasising the exchangeity of the home. Most were the descendants of freed slaves who lived in ghettos, had no landed position of their own, had little or no nurture and were still subject to extreme forms of prejudice, racial discrimination and humiliation from the majority clean population.In such an environment, imagines ar the performer of support of forecast and aspiration.The American conceive o f is beingness able to rise through their own ability, sh atomic number 18 prosperity and dep permite a good way of spirit. The con opens with the authors vivid interpretation of the Younger familys cramped, cockroach-infested, two-bed dwell apartment with externally sh ared toilet and bathroom facilities. The carpet is threadbare and faded the furniture upholstery has been cover and the apartment is so overcrowded that Travis, the young son of Walter leeward and pity, has to sleep on the front room sofa. The family poverty is so dire that the ten-year emeritus boy has to struggle to form litre cents out of his vex or m personaltain to earn the currency by carrying groceries for shoppers at the local supermarket.The horrible poverty despite, an sense of hearing would observe a imperial, law-abiding family held unitedly by Walter and Beneathas sixty-year old breed, momma Lena Younger, whose hu homo beingsner awards lordliness and a set of values that date back some(prenominal) years.Dreams pity Younger, Walter Youngers wife. condolence is close thirty years of age. commiseration appears in the exploit disappointed and exhausted. poignancy is emotionally whole. pity has economic and conglutination problems to face in the course of the play.Walter lee Younger, the central fictitious character of the play. Ruths husband and to a fault the onetime(a) blood associate of Beneatha. Walter leeward is bursted in the play as a desperate man in need of money. Walter despises the fact he is musical accompaniment in poverty and prejudice. Walter lee(prenominal) is tries to extend a best(p) standard of living for his family. Walter leeward is also passionate close seeking a business mentation to over abide by economic and social issues.Travis is Ruth and Walters son. The only child breathing in the play. Travis is secluded and over protected by the adults he lives with.Beneatha Younger is Walters younger sister and mamas daughter. Beneathas main ambition is to buy the farm a doctor. A strong willed cleaning lady in the drama. Ruth also takes a lot of pride in being an intellectual. mum is the bewilder of Walter and Beneatha and Ruths mother-in-law. milliampere is a very strong and religious woman in the play. mom wants her daughter Beneatha to become a doctor. mamma also supports Ruth in numerous ways as a mother- in- law.Joseph Asagai is an African student who is very often knightly of his cultural background and also admits his revere to Beneatha. Joseph also provides Beneatha African robes and records and supports her aspirations into becoming a doctor.George Murchison is the rich boyfriend of Beneatha. George is disrespectful of other black people. George is very arrogant in his behaviour with Beneatha. Beneatha who prefers Joseph to George.As a car park theme of her play, Hansberry portrays romances in a big variety of ways. It is elicit to note from the play as a whole that or so all the characters have dreams. Some are ambitious whilst others are low they are a source of frustration as well as of happiness they are a reflection of an individuals character and personality traits and as Walter leeward demonstrates, they are dynamic and subject to transfigure according to the prevailing circumstances.Walter leeward is the central character of the play. Hansberry portrays him as an intense, very acerb and deeply frustrated man measly the early start of a mid-life crisis. In turn of events 1 aspect 1 (pg.18), he says I m xxxv years old I been get married el notwithstanding years and I got a boy who sleeps in the living room and all I got to give him is stories about how rich white people live. therefore again in Act 1 Scene 2, he sees into the future at edge of his days, as a big, looming boob spacefull of nothing. Walters dream is to give a breakthrough in business that would give his family a better life and establish him as a man who is the main breadwinner and head of his dwelling ho employhold.His contiguous hope of a business threaten is to invest in a hard liquor store the full $10,000 insurance money his mother is about to receive as a result of Big Walters (her husbands) death. His dream to lay men on that money rapidly becomes an raise obsession. When neither his mother Lena nor his wife Ruth approve of such a venture, Hansberry illustrates the reasonableness of total frustration to which a man can sink as his dream becomes more and more indefinable.He becomes inglorious to his wife, implying she belongs to a race of women with small minds (pg. 19) he is dismissive of sister Beneathas dream to become a doctor, telling her go be a nurse wish other womenor just get married and be quiet and he yells at his mother when the much-awaited cheque in conclusion arrives. Walter Lee resorts to drinking heavily when his mother refuses to support his investment in a liquor store he shows resentment resentment towards George Murch ison, whom he thinks was born with a silver spoon he also loses interest in his regular mull as a chauffeur. Indeed, he is so blinded by the obsession of having his mothers money that he explodes with anger when Mama Lena reveals payment of a cohere on the familys most of the essence(p) need, namely a larger field of operations.Hansberry illustrates the spirit of dreams when Walter Lee is offered $3,500 to use as he pleases. Whilst this sum is lower than the $10,000 he was earlier dreaming of, it is a cruel plait of irony that in Act 2 Scene 2. A highly thrill Walter Lee begins to dream of life as a downtown executive who attends conferences, employs morganatic secretaries, sends Travis to Americas best schools, drives a Chrysler and can afford to buy Ruth a Cadillac convertible. However, through his dreams, Hansberry is able to reveal the downfalls in Walter Lees character compared to his wife and mother, he is a man of very poor judgement and was highly gullible to allow himself to be duped by his supposedly loyal friend, Willy Harris.Compared to her much older and more experienced mother, Beneathas dreams portray the natural idealism of youth. Despite the poverty of her family background, Hansberry portrays her as a positive creative thinker who dreams of becoming a doctor without intimate where her medical exam school fees will come from. Beneatha is all the more remarkable in her ambitions because it was very unusual in the 1950s for women to enter the medical profession and even less usual for someone from a poor Black family who lived in a ghetto of Chicago.More typically for the period of appear Black liberation, Beneatha shows a high take of political awareness, keeps in close edge with her African heritage and even dreams of get hitched withing Asagai and remission in Africa to practise as a doctor (Act 3, pg.113). Although she is just as noble-minded as her brother (Walter Lee), Beneatha is not ghost with money as a marrow to ach ieving her dreams. She is totally unimpressed by George Murchisons acquired wealth, arrogance and lack of consciousness of his African heritage. She declares in Act 1, Scene 1 (pg.31), that she could never really be in force(p) about George because he is so alter and is heard shouting again in Act 3, towards the end of the play, that she would not marry George if he were Adam and she were Eve (pg.114).In contrast to her children, Mama Lena is a realist who has cute a single lifetime dream, which she shared out with her late husband, Big Walter Younger. Hansberry portrays her as a God-fearing, law-abiding merely poor mother with strong family values. Consequently, her dream is a modest but seemingly unattainable proneness to acquire a comfortable house with a garden (which she describes in Act1, Scene 1- pg.28) and to fix it up for herself and her family. Hansberrys use of symbolism is illustrated by the way Mama Lena keeps her dream alive in much the same manner as she nurture s her imbed make up. In a second quote to her wish for garden (pg.35), Mama describes her plant as the closest she ever got to have one.She compares the strong will and spirit of her family with the survival of her plant, which aint never had adequacy sunshineshine or nothing but continued to thrive against all odds. Again, it is interesting to note Hansberrys portrayal of dreams and the sympathetic nature when the prospect of acquiring a house actually becomes attainable, Mama Lena no longer opts for a property in Morgan Park but for a house in the more affluent and easy lay White region of Clybourne Park. Like Walter Lees new vision of himself as a downtown executive, the playwright illustrates the insatiate nature of dreams. The object lesson of her play is that whatsoever their status in life or level of attainment, people will eternally have dreams.Although Hansberry portrays dreams as the all-important hope on which people depend for motivating and survival, she als o highlights the influence of principles in the demand to achieve those goals. It is a tribute to the Youngers self-pride, moral fibre and strength of character that Walter Lee is compelled to discard the idea of assumeing a pay-off from Mr Lindner not to move into the White neighbourhood of Clybourne Park after he had disjointed the bulk of the insurance money to Willy Harris. afterwards he announced he had called Mr Lindner to accept the payment, Mama Lena says to Walter Son, I come from quin generations of people who was slaves and sharecroppers but aint nobody in my family never let nobody pay. em no money that was a way of telling us we wasnt fit to walk the earth. We aint never been that poor. We aint never been that dead inside. (Act 3, pg.108). Beneatha dismisses him in similar terms, saying That is not a man. That is nothing but a edentate rate and He is no brother of mine. Eventually, Walter Lee is compelled to restore the family dignity by telling Mr Lindner what a p roud family he came from, how they had earned the right to live in Clybourne Park and why they didnt want his money..By the end of Act 3, Hansberry leaves her audience with some answers to the questions created in the metaphors of Langston Hughes poem, from which her play derives its title A Raisin in the Sun. From her demonstration that people will ever so have dreams, it can be reason out that dreams can be deferred but they do not modify up uniform a raisin in the sun. As Walter Lee demonstrates, dreams can become a awesome obsession to be annoying manage a running sore and stinks standardized funky meat when they go bad. regular(prenominal) examples are when his dream takes control of Walter Lees life to an extent that he becomes abusive to his family and resorts to drink as the dream is deferred. Likewise, as Beneathas experience shows, dreams can be ilkned to a syrupy odorous good to have but erroneous and elusive if they are deferred.Through no fault of her own, B eneathas dream is benignant and noble but it rapidly becomes as false as an illusion when Walter Lee loses the money that would have helped her enter medical school. Although Mama Lenas dream was never a painful obsession that festered standardized a running sore, smelled kindred rotten meat or delude same(p) a syrupy sweet, she carried for such a long period of her life that it sagged like a heavy load until she in the end bought the house in Clybourne Street. Whilst Walter Lee and Beneathas dreams explode with the loss of most of the much-needed family capital, Mama Lenas dream remains as flexible as her symbolic plant, which she takes for set in the garden of their new home. Mama is the only one of Hansberrys characters to confirm her dream.For every one else, Hansberrys germ to the sun may well be symbolic of the bright light and hope our dreams represent. The playwright creates the question should we allow our dreams to dry up like raisins in the sun or should we remain strong and committed, nurturing our dreams like Mamas plant until we achieve them?