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"RAISIN IN THE SUN, A" (LORRAINE HANSBERRY).   Term Paper ID:24844 Click to get this paper

Essay Subject: Play's themes, plot, characters, values, social & racial views.... More...

7 Pages / 1575 Words 8 sources, 10 Citations, MLA Format $28.00 Return to List of Papers

Paper Abstract: Play's themes, plot, characters, values, social & racial views. Paper Introduction: The purpose of this research is to examine Lorraine Hansberry's play A Raisin in the Sun. The plan of the research will be to set forth the pattern of ideas and events in the play and then to discuss the means by which this pattern is elaborated in the action, as well as the sociopolitical context in which the playwright's intended effect of the play on the audience can be most readily identified. The action of A Raisin in the Sun in general involves what people want and what they are willing to pay to get it. Indeed, describing what the characters want very much describes what the play is about. The Youngers, an extended black family, share the dream of escaping their two-bedroom Chicago tenement and everything it represents. How the dream should be fulfilled now that an insurance legacy is coming their way marks the main level of co Text of the Paper: The entire text of the paper is shown below. However, the text is somewhat scrambled. We want to give you as much information as we possibly can about our papers and essays, but we cannot give them away for free. In the text below you will find that while disordered, many of the phrases are essentially intact. From this text you will be able to get a solid sense of the writing style, the concepts addressed, and the sources used in the research paper. Hansberry may be criticizing Walter for his faulty moral priorities,but the real target is the illogic of the social reality in which theYoungers are obliged to function, first on the level of racial injustice,but second on the level of the materialistic content of that society perse. More generally, the swindle exposes the content of that andsimilar dreams, however strongly held, as spurious and vulnerable, and onthat account lacking the moral priority of Beneatha's idea of service toher people has or even of Ruth's dream of a less burdensome, quieter homelife. Meanwhile, one Karl Lindnerappears, offering to buy back Lena's down payment; it was for a house in awhite neighborhood. Lorraine Hansberry. Theproblem is multilayered. If integration were the realdriving force of this play, it would indeed fall into the category of piècebien faite. Literary and socialcritics more often focused on the internal struggles of Walter, who wantsto own a liquor store" (Gomez 38). Fearful of not being able to handle mortgage payments,Lena acquiesces in Walter's decision to take Lindner's money. But when Lenawants him to say "I done the right thing," he explodes at her forbutchering up his dream (8 ). Robert Nemiroff. Boston: Twayne, 1984.Gomez, Jewelle. The forceful widowed matriarch Lena dreams of a housewith a garden. The Youngers' moral and material priorities emerge and collide in ActI, become increasingly complicated in Act II, and are resolved, in partlyunexpected ways, in Act III. First, Walter takes two-thirds of themoney for his store. Walter's wife Ruth, who has raised a ten-year-old son, Travis, in the ghetto, is not entirely happy because Walter is somiserable, but is most unhappy to have discovered that she is pregnant; shewants an abortion. Brady (48)sees in A Raisin in the Sun treatment of the fact that "structural causesof poverty, such as housing and underemployment, and lack of educationalopportunities, can have damaging and long lasting impact on the precariousand fragile relationships in families and friendships." UndoubtedlyHansberry was well-acquainted with this line of thought. Her first writingjob was with the publication Freedom, published by Paul Robeson, multipleartist and target of right-wing politicians throughout the 194 s and 195 s,where "she began to consider the fusion of art and politics" (Cheney 47).And of course Hansberry was influenced by the social-activist rhetoric ofLangston Hughes, from whose poem "A Dream Deferred" the title is taken(Hughes 33). The plan of the research will be to set forth thepattern of ideas and events in the play and then to discuss the means bywhich this pattern is elaborated in the action, as well as thesociopolitical context in which the playwright's intended effect of theplay on the audience can be most readily identified. Walter'sacceptance of the Clybourne Park house as the content of his own dream is avictory over segregated society on one hand and on the other overmaterialism dreamed as a liquor store. Works CitedBrady, Evelyn McLean. Looming in thebackground of this spiritualized matter of dreams is not only the "matter"of lived reality of injustice but also the "matter" of the materialism thatis the concretized social idea encasing potentialities and disappointmentsof the Youngers' experience. The purpose of this research is to examine Lorraine Hansberry's play ARaisin in the Sun. It can be interpreted asHansberry's attempt to manipulate attributes of the well-made play so as tocontain the dynamic interaction between past and present, the moral andmaterial, the emotional and the practical, to create a line of action andthought responsive to dimensions of lived reality. But each dreamalso has a double meaning or an embedded contradiction, typically with asocial dimension. How the dream should befulfilled now that an insurance legacy is coming their way marks the mainlevel of conflict. The text is a more complex exploration of the way the dream isnurtured, developed, matured, and come to terms with by the Youngers. The Work of Democracy: Ralph Bunche, Kenneth B. Behind Lindner's block-busting is the first-level narrative andcritique of white-society illogic. Foreword. Ed. "Dreams Deferred." Village Voice 13 Feb. Ed. Undoubtedly, as Brady says (49), A Raisin in the Sun "emphasizesthat human dignity and values can be maintained in dire circumstances andcan overcome violence." But as Keppel points out (passim), it is a mistaketo take the view, as well-meaning critics appear to have done when the playopened in 1959, that A Raisin in the Sun is "about" middle class blacks asit were moving on up to the white suburbs. In Act II, each character more orless enacts his or her deepest desire. Clinton F. "A Dream Deferred." Contemporary Black Drama. 1996: 38-39.Hansberry, Lorraine. Direct experience of poverty,invisibility, and more general racial injustice informs the personalitiesof Walter, Lena, Beneatha, and Ruth. However, A Raisin in the Sun does not follow theclassic pattern of the pièce bien faite. never quite relinquishesthat dream; picking a fight with Beneatha when she is on the point ofmarrying Asagai instead of Murchison shows how powerful a sociallyconstructed dream is. First, Walter shapes his life around thematerialist American dream of wealth. That iswhat Nemiroff means when he says that Hansberry wanted to portray "herpeople as she knew them to be: human beings with conflicts, dreams,aspirations, foibles and strengths; the corrupted and the pure in heart"(Nemiroff xi). The fact that the characters' responses to such experiencediffer and conflict lends texture and stature to a play that mightotherwise have assumed the status of one-note sociological tract. Walter Jr. New York: Plume, 1992. ix-xxii.Stanton, Stephen S. Act I shows Lena's presumptive emotional andmaterial tyranny over the crowded household, the emotional strain betweenBeneatha and Walter over Beneatha's serious educational purpose, and thestrain in Walter and Ruth's marriage. The dream for each character exists in itself, not unlike the embryoRuth is carrying. Clark, Lorraine Hansberry, and the Cultural Politics of Race. Herdaughter Beneatha, determined to be a doctor, is pulled between twosuitors, blatant black bourgeois George Murchison, and black Africannationalist Joseph Asagai. New York: Thomas Y. Inthe line of action for each characters is an embedded critique not only ofthe society that prevents the Youngers' dreams from coming true but also ofthe content of the dreams, shaped as they are by that same society. In the struggle for moral ground and authority, each ofthe Youngers tries to create a world in which the spirit of the dream canbe made concrete, before concrete reality itself crushes the spirit. It all goes wrong, of course. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1995.Nemiroff, Jewell Gresham. 911-12. A Raisin in the Sun: The Unfilmed Original Screenplay. According to Cheney, Lena relinquishes hercontrol over her son's money and life decisions, realizing that "he needsthe money to chisel a place for himself in the silent monolith of whitesociety" (Cheney 67). Cheney says that A Raisin in the Sun is an example of a well-madeplay, which in context appears to refer to the fact that it is a problemdrama with a linear plot that systematically unfolds and that follows theprogress of character development through a series of incidents thatculminate in resolution and clarification of the central characters'fortunes (Stanton 911-12). His frustrationpeaks when Lena announces that--essentially ignoring his need forinvestment money--she has put a down payment on a house. In other words, a range of social forces had converged inpopular and artistic imagination to work their influence on the content ofideas and feelings evident in the play. The seriousness of Beneatha's dream of practicingin Africa--which because of the loss of the money fades even as herrelationship with Asagai brings her spiritually and emotionally closer toit--can almost be presumed (at least as far as Hansberry is concerned) whenset beside what one could call the unseriousness of Walter's dream. Behind Willy Harris's theft is thesecond-level narrative and critique of the content of white-societypriorities. The action of A Raisin in the Sun in general involves what people wantand what they are willing to pay to get it. Complicating that, Walter (wrongly)trusts the dream to come true, or more exactly trusts that the materialdream has the same purity for others that it has for him. Now Gomez is concerned to make the pointthat Beneatha's dreams as a woman have moral standing, too, and deservecritical notice. First,he rises above his own priorities to make Hansberry's case thatmarginalized people earn their dreams with their entire lives. Walter builds up a pattern of logic for hislife that is valid in terms of each of the single pieces of logicthemselves. But the play is not merely a socialtract. Thefact that Lena does not endorse Walter's dream but transforms herrelationship with Walter to help make it happen does not erase the factthat the content of his dream is itself problematic. By Lorraine Hansberry. Seen in that light, Walter's reasons for not taking the ready-cash block-busting buyout amount to the moral argument of the play. But the contrast between what Beneatha and Walter want ismore complex than that. Twayne's United States Authors Series 43 . A Raisin in the Sun. New York: Signet/New American Library, 1966.Hughes, Langston. Gomez sees latent feminism inBeneatha's insistence that "her education is just as important as herbrother's entrepreneurial aspirations or her boyfriend's marriage proposal"(Gomez 38). 33.Keppel, Ben. Ed. Beneatha's absorptionin progressive politics and ideas causes her to make a project of paradingaround in African costume, not least to goad Walter, who wants nothing somuch as to stop being virtually invisible, chronically unable to functionas a player in either the white man's business world ("I want so manythings they're driving me crazy") or his own household. Crowell, 1969. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1971. It might also besaid that Walter is so absorbed in his dream that he cannot see the logicalinevitability of Willy Harris's swindle, which exposes Walter's dream asincompetent. Next, his partner skips town with all of it, all butdestroying Beneatha's chance for an education. Standard interpretations of the play, Gomez says, "usuallyignored the issues raised by Beneatha, a black woman in the '5 s who wantsa career, or by the wife, Ruth, who wants an abortion. John Gassner and Edward Quinn. "Well-Made Play." The Reader's Encyclopedia of World Drama. Beneatha's dream of being a doctor is honored more in the breach thanthe observance in her own family circle. But in refusing to be bought out of the newneighborhood by the Man, Walter voices the news to the Man that the covertmessages of white racism, fed by socially sanctioned hostile fears, havelong since been decoded, and that the material dream is just as welldeferred, as long as the dreamer can set the terms. Walter's dream is an artifact of a socially constructed ideal that isalso part of Hansberry's message of social critique. Theworld of the liquor store, the medical degree, the house and garden, thehappy home--each dream is a species of spiritualized matter. Cheney (63) cites Walter's and Lena's differingperception of what the liquor store will do: Walter sees it as a ticket outof poverty, and Lena sees the destructiveness that liquor has brought tomany families ("I ain't puttin the memory of my husband into no liquor"(Hansberry 35). Oliver and Stephanie Sills. Indeed, describing what thecharacters want very much describes what the play is about. In Act III, recognizing the depth of Walter'sfear that he has missed his only chance to break out of the trap of hislife, Lena gives Walter the rest of the legacy, specifying that one-thirdis for Beneatha's education. And meanwhile, Lena and Ruth both work as domestics tohelp make ends meet. But at themoment of truth, Walter refuses Lindner's offer, and the family escapesfrom the tenement after all. Her son Walter, Jr., frustrated and humiliated to be a whiteman's chauffeur, wants to be his own boss as partner in a liquor store. For old-time-religion reasons, Lenainsists Walter prevent Ruth from having an abortion. But events overtake his logic, and both his dreams and whathappens to foul them expose the fact that illogic controls his dream. The Youngers,an extended black family, share the dream of escaping their two-bedroomChicago tenement and everything it represents. A key subtext of A Raisin in the Sun, interpenetrating its powerfulemotional content, is an informed exercise in social criticism. "How to Survive Urban Violence With Hope." English Journal 84 (September 1995): 43-5 .Cheney, Anne. If this paper is not what you are looking for, you can search again: Search for: or Click here to request an essay written just for you.