Racial discrimination has a great impact on people of various races. Throughout the past generations, many people have faced discrimination because of the way that they look. People have been hated, beaten, killed and made fun of. Many people have been put down because of the way that they look. Adults, teens and even children began thinking less of themselves after the incidents. Many African Americans started considering themselves inferior to whites, which lead them to perform worse in school and daily activities. Looking at the play A Raisin in the Sun by Lorraine Hansberry, the Montgomery Bus Boycott, and the video experiment Brown Eyes and Blue Eyes performed by Jane Elliott, it is evident that African Americans faced discrimination for hundreds of years, which lead them to consider themselves inferior amongst all other people. A Raisin in the Sun portrays multiple examples of African Americans being discriminated against in the 1950s. The play reveals an obvious example of this. In scene 1 of act 2, Ruth states, “Mama, there ain’t no colored people living in Clybourne Park” (Hansberry 57). This quote reveals that the Younger family is afraid and ashamed of moving into a house in an all white neighborhood. Ruth’s excitement switched to sadness and disappointment real quick when she found out the location of their new home. However, towards the end of the play, the family agrees to do anything in order to not be put down by the whites and survive in Clybourne Park. In
A Raisin in the Sun, play by Lorraine Hansberry depicts the life of the Younger family. Youngers is an African American family living in Chicago in 1950s, they are struggling for money. As the play proceeds, they run into a plenty of problems. The younger family is slowly tearing apart. Ruth younger the wife of Walter Lee Younger is holding the family from ripping apart. Ruth is the person who supports everyone in the family. Ruth's capability of thinking through and beyond with her fearless and rational nature makes her mature, selfless and loving women.
In A Raisin In the Sun Lorraine Hansberry uses everyday objects-a plant, money, and a home to symbolize a family's struggle to deal with racism and oppression in their everyday lives, as well as to exemplify their dreams. She begins with a vivid description of the family's weary, small, and dark apartment in Chicago's ghetto Southside during the 1950s. The Youngers are an indigent African-American family who has few choices in their white society. Each individual of the Younger family has a separate dream-Beneatha wants to become a doctor, Walter wants to open a liquor store, and Ruth and Mama want a new and better home. The Youngers struggle to accomplish these dreams throughout the play, and a major aspect of their happiness and
Another theme and issue that arrives from the play A Raisin in the Sun, by Lorraine Hansberry, is racism. During the 1950’s blacks and whites were segregated. The house the Younger’s purchased was in the Clybourne Park neighborhood, an all white neighborhood. When Lena told the family they were moving to Clybourne Park they stood with amazement. “Mama, there ain’t no colored people in Clybourne Park” (p.734). The family heard of other colored families’ houses being set on fire in this neighborhood, they were concerned that the same thing would happen to them.
A Raisin in the sun shows the hardship many need to face in order to attain this notion of the American Dream. The book did more than then just show what everyone faced, she shows the struggles that many African American families had to face when trying to achieve the notion of the American Dream. She does this by showing the environment that many African American lived in when there was bombing in the neighborhood or when white people would force African American who finally bought a home, out. Lorraine also shows the struggles of the characters of the book like Walter who struggles with the decision he makes and the contradictions that stop him from achieving his goals of being wealthy or when Beneatha goes against the norms of society
In a Raisin in the sun people wondered about Walter Lee’s inner journey. A Raisin in the sun is a play that explorer’s the struggles of African American people who achieve their desires. It’s about an African American family trying to pursue an American dream of owning their own home but in the process they encounter racism and they must decide what is really important in life.
The story of this play is simple and the majority of African-Americans faced such issues in the 1950’s, living on the south side of Chicago, struggles with poverty, dignity and dreams of a better life. Wanting better for your children and trying to fit in, while maintaining family values. A Raisin in the Sun is an excellent example of the relationship between family values and conflict. In this play it portrays: values and purpose of dreams, the need to fight for racial discrimination and the importance of family.
A Raisin in the Sun by Lorraine Hansberry is a play that displays housing discrimination in Chicago during the 1950s. Housing discrimination was partially an effect of the Great Migration. This was an event during the 1950s that resulted in about six million African Americans “migrating” from the south to the north, Midwest, and west regions of the United States. This caused the population of black people in major northern cities to increase rapidly. They are then only able to live in certain neighborhoods, which keeps their communities segregated.
Raisin in the Sun is a play on Broadway that tells about a tragedy faced by an African American. The play is about Youngers family that lives in the ghetto and one that is at crossroads following the death of Younger’s father. Mother Lena Younger and her children reside in a cramped apartment in a poverty-stricken district in Chicago. Her grown-up children include Water Lee and Beneatha. The life insurance that matured following the death of Lena’s husband earns the family ten thousand dollars, and everybody is eagerly waiting for the full payment. The question that the entire family is faced with is whether the money should be invested in supporting studies of her daughter through the medical school, the business deal with the sons, or other dreams.
A Raisin in the Sun is play written about a family in the 1950’s, and the focus of the play is how racism affects that family. The family in the play tries to buy a house in a white neighborhood, and they have to deal with discriminatory housing practices and the threat of racial violence. A Raisin in the Sun is relevant today because a lot of the insights it makes about racism are still debated over today. One of the issues it tackles is racial violence. In the play, the family deals with the threat of racial violence from people who don’t want them to move into their new house. Today, many feel that racial violence is being done by the police. The story also deals with the family’s struggles to buy a house and the abuse they face for
Lorraine Hansberry's A Raisin in the Sun is a play about segregation, triumph, and coping with personal tragedy. Set in Southside Chicago, A Raisin in the Sun focuses on the individual dreams of the Younger family and their personal achievement. The Younger's are an African American family besieged by poverty, personal desires, and the ultimate struggle against the hateful ugliness of racism. Lena Younger, Mama, is the protagonist of the story and the eldest Younger. She dreams of many freedoms, freedom to garden, freedom to raise a societal-viewed equal family, and freedom to live liberated of segregation. Next in succession is Beneatha Younger, Mama's daughter, assimilationist, and one who dreams of aiding people by breaking down
A Raisin in the Sun was written by Lorraine Hansberry and is a play about an African American family who are struggling in the 1950’s to keep the family together. Although the play is portrayed in the 50’s many issues like the economy, racism, and family dynamics the characters had to face; these issues are still issues in the 21st century.
A Raisin in the Sun was a play written in the late 1950’s analyzing the cruel effects of racism amongst the Younger family. The younger family suffers from racial discrimination within their living space, place of employment, and the housing industry. Racism has been going on for a very long time in the United States and will always continue to exist. Racism has not only led to political but also social issues. "A Raisin in the Sun confronted Whites for an acknowledgement that a black family could be fully human, 'just like us."(qtd. White fear.) The setting took place in the ghetto, south of Chicago where mainly African Americans settled. In this division, apartments and houses were overly priced, crowded and poorly maintained. Crime rates were extremely high and most families lived in poverty. Due to segregated housing, it was a daily struggle for black families who had hopes in leaving the ghetto for better lives.
A Raisin in the Sun is written by a famous African- American play write, Lorraine Hansberry, in 1959. It was a first play written by a black woman and directed by a black man, Lloyd Richards, on Broadway in New York. The story of A Raisin in the Sun is based on Lorraine Hansberry’s own early life experiences, from which she and her whole family had to suffer, in Chicago. Hansberry’s father, Carol Hansberry, also fought a legal battle against a racial restrictive covenant that attempted to stop African- American families from moving in to white neighborhoods. He also made the history by moving his family to the white section of Chicago’s Hyde Park neighborhood in 1938. The struggle of Lorraine Hansberry’s family inspired her to write the
In the words of Jim Cocola and Ross Douthat, Hansberry wrote the play A Raisin in the Sun to mimic how she grew up in the 1930s. Her purpose was to tell how life was for a black family living during the pre-civil rights era when segregation was still legal (spark notes). Hansberry introduces us to the Youngers’, a black family living in Chicago’s Southside during the 1950s pre-civil rights movement. The Younger family consists of Mama, who is the head of the household, Walter and Beneatha, who are Mama’s children, Ruth, who is Walter’s wife, and Travis, who is Walter and Ruth’s son. Throughout the play the Youngers’ address poverty, discrimination, marital problems, and abortion. Mama is waiting on a check from the
In the play A Raisin in the Sun written by Lorraine Hansberry, a story about an African American family living in Chicago. The book illustrates what the daily problems of an average black family had to deal with while living in America in the 1950s and their struggle of overcoming obstacles to reach their “dream”. Hansberry use this novel to address topics such as racism, racial inequality, and racial discrimination. In 1954, many people during that time supported segregation. People perceived whites and blacks completely different and people wanted them to be separate. Everywhere in the south had “whites only” or “colored”, and many wanted to keep it that way. History will always repeat itself and people are not