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

SettingLorriane Hansberry wrote A Raisin in the Sun in the late 1950s. Hansberrys choice of a in truth wretched, working-class Black family in the set of S go forthhside Chicago in the late 1950s, underlines the important role of dreams as a driving force in the plumps of battalion with no other confide of survival or breakthrough from poverty and despair. The new-made family is typical of around Black families in the American south in the late 1950s. The younger apartment is the only setting throughout the whole run for emphasising the centrality of the home. virtually were the desc terminusants of freed slaves who lived in ghettos, had no landed property of their own, had little or no education and were still subject to extreme forms of prejudice, racial variation and humiliation from the majority gaberdine population.In such an environment, dreams are the agent of oblige of hope and aspiration.The American dream is existence able to climbing through their own abil ity, share prosperity and direct a heartfelt way of living. The unravel opens with the authors vivid description of the junior familys cramped, cockroach-infested, two-bedroom apartment with externally shared toilet and bathroom facilities. The carpeting is threadbare and faded the furniture upholstery has been covered and the apartment is so overcrowded that Travis, the young son of Walter downwind and ruth, has to sleep on the living-room sofa. The family poverty is so dire that the ten-year old boy has to struggle to get fifty cents out of his beget or offer to earn the money by carrying groceries for shoppers at the local supermarket.The horrible poverty despite, an audience would observe a olympian, lawful family held together by Walter and Beneathas sixty-year old mother, momma Lena Younger, whose piece of musicner portrays lordliness and a set of values that date back publicy years.Dreams pathos Younger, Walter Youngers wife. poignancy is about thirty years of age. Ruth appears in the play disappointed and exhausted. Ruth is emotionally real. Ruth has economical and marriage problems to face in the course of the play.Walter leeward Younger, the central reference work book of the play. Ruths husband and also the older brother of Beneatha. Walter lee(prenominal) is revealed in the play as a desperate man in need of money. Walter despises the fact he is living in poverty and prejudice. Walter lee(prenominal) is tries to provide a better standard of living for his family. Walter leeward is also passionate about seeking a business idea to repress economic and social issues.Travis is Ruth and Walters son. The only child animated 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 chief(prenominal) ambition is to bring a doctor. A strong willed woman in the drama. Ruth also takes a lot of pride in being an intellectual.Mama is the mothe r of Walter and Beneatha and Ruths mother-in-law. Mama is a very(prenominal) strong and religious woman in the play. Mama wants her daughter Beneatha to become a doctor. Mama also supports Ruth in many shipway as a mother- in- law.Joseph Asagai is an African student who is very much proud of his cultural background and also admits his love to Beneatha. Joseph also provides Beneatha African robes and records and supports her aspirations into become 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 common prow of her play, Hansberry portrays dreams in a great variety of ways. It is interesting to none from the play as a whole that virtually all the parts have dreams. both(prenominal) are ambitious whilst others are modest they are a citation of frustration as well as of happiness they are a reflection of an individuals cha racter and personality traits and as Walter Lee demonstrates, they are dynamic and subject to change according to the prevailing circumstances.Walter Lee is the central character of the play. Hansberry portrays him as an intense, very cutting and deeply baffle man suffering the early start of a mid- liveness crisis. In minute 1 Scene 1 (pg.18), he says I m thirty-five years old I been married eleven years and I got a boy who sleeps in the living room and all I got to lend him is stories about how rich white people live. Then once to a greater extent in Act 1 Scene 2, he sees into the future at edge of his days, as a big, looming blank spacefull of nothing. Walters dream is to achieve a breakthrough in business that would give his family a better life and establish him as a man who is the mown(prenominal) breadwinner and head of his household.His immediate hope of a business proceed is to invest in a liquor store the full $10,000 policy money his mother is about to receive as a solving of macroscopic Walters (her husbands) death. His dream to lay hands on that money rapidly becomes an overwhelming obsession. When neither his mother Lena nor his wife Ruth approve of such a venture, Hansberry illustrates the depth of total frustration to which a man can sink as his dream becomes more and more indefinable.He becomes abusive 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 homogeneous other womenor in force(p) get married and be quiet and he yells at his mother when the much-awaited cheque finally arrives. Walter Lee resorts to drinking heavily when his mother refuses to support his investment in a liquor store he shows bitter resentment towards George Murchison, whom he thinks was born with a silver spoon he also loses interest in his regular job as a chauffeur. Indeed, he is so blinded by the obsession of having his mothers money that he explodes with rage when Mama Lena reveals payment of a file on the familys most essential need, namely a large house.Hansberry illustrates the nature of dreams when Walter Lee is offered $3,500 to use as he pleases. Whilst this sum is overthrow than the $10,000 he was originally dreaming of, it is a cruel twist of caustic remark that in Act 2 Scene 2. A highly stimulate Walter Lee begins to dream of life as a downtown decision maker who attends conferences, employs bungling secretaries, sends Travis to Americas best schools, drives a Chrysler and can pass to buy Ruth a Cadillac convertible. How forever, 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 extremely gullible to allow himself to be duped by his supposedly loyal friend, Willy Harris.Compared to her much older and more experient mother, Beneathas dreams portray the natural idealism of youth. Despite t he poverty of her family background, Hansberry portrays her as a positive thinker who dreams of becoming a doctor without knowledgeable where her medical checkup school fees will come from. Beneatha is all the more unusual 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 acclivitous Black liberation, Beneatha shows a high level of political awareness, keeps in termination touch with her African heritage and even dreams of link uping Asagai and settling in Africa to occupation as a doctor (Act 3, pg.113). Although she is just as idealistic as her brother (Walter Lee), Beneatha is not obsessed with money as a essence to achieving her dreams. She is totally unimpressed by George Murchisons acquired wealth, arrogance and lack of disposition of his African heritage. She declares in Act 1, Scene 1 (pg.31), th at she could never actually be serious about George because he is so shallow and is comprehend 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 cherished a single lifetime dream, which she shared with her late husband, Big Walter Younger. Hansberry portrays her as a God-fearing, law-abiding entirely poor mother with strong family values. Consequently, her dream is a modest but seemingly unattainable relish 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 uniform manner as she nurtures her potted workings. In a second reference 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 spir it of her family with the survival of her plant, which aint never had enough sunlightshine or nothing but run to thrive against all odds. Again, it is interesting to note Hansberrys portrayal of dreams and the human 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 exclusive White neighbourhood of Clybourne Park. Like Walter Lees new vision of himself as a downtown executive, the dramatist illustrates the insatiable nature of dreams. The moral of her play is that whatever their status in life or level of attainment, people will always have dreams.Although Hansberry portrays dreams as the all-important hope on which people depend for motivation and survival, she also highlights the influence of principles in the chase 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 discar d the idea of withdrawing a pay-off from Mr Lindner not to move into the White neighbourhood of Clybourne Park after he had lost the majority of the insurance money to Willy Harris.After he announced he had called Mr Lindner to accept the payment, Mama Lena says to Walter Son, I come from five 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 toothless rate and He is no brother of mine. Eventually, Walter Lee is compelled to restore the family dignity by telling Mr Lindner what a proud 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 crea ted 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 always have dreams, it can be concluded that dreams can be deferred but they do not dry up like a raisin in the sun. As Walter Lee demonstrates, dreams can become a painful obsession to be annoying like a running sore and stinks like gooey meat when they go bad. Typical 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 likened to a syrupy sugariness good to have but false and hard if they are deferred.Through no fault of her own, Beneathas dream is sweet and noble but it rapidly becomes as false as an gloss 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 like a running sore, smelled like rotten meat or delude like a syrupy sweet, she carried for such a long period of her life that it sagged like a heavy load until she finally 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 position in the garden of their new home. Mama is the only one of Hansberrys characters to realise her dream.For every one else, Hansberrys reference 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?