Lorraine Hansberry's A Raisin In The Sun

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Regardless of what ethnicity or gender, human beings all undergo a significant amount of change during their lifetime. Throughout the progression of the play, A Raisin in the Sun, Lorraine Hansberry incorporates this idea of human development in the character, Walter Lee Younger. Although he struggles, Walter’s journey morphs him from an individual who is engrossed with get-rich-quick schemes into a man worthy of respect. In his character, Hansberry portrays how easily poverty and racism are able to twist and depress people, turning them against those that they love most. Walter’s changes contribute to the given theme because though he is forced to endure many events entailing misfortune, as the play concludes, he makes the correct decision…show more content…
Walter’s dream to be wealthy under any circumstance still exists as he is now eager to create an investment in a liquor store using Mama’s money and believes that it is the only method that will prove to be effective. Once again, he is quick to think and goes against the lesson that the underlying theme of the play is trying to disclose. At first, Mama refuses to allow her husband’s money to be invested in liquor and buys a house with a certain portion of the money to provide the family with a better home. However, she is eventually convinced otherwise and tells Walter to “take three thousand dollars and put it in a savings account for Beneatha’s medical schooling..[and] the rest...in a checking account-with... [his] name on it”(Hansberry 89). Mama also tells Walter “to be the head of the family now” but he takes advantage of her trust by blindly investing all of it in the liquor store since he has full faith in the efficiency of it (Hansberry 89). At this point in the play, the audience gets a glimpse of who Walter would be if he was more pleased with his life. He is friendly to his sister, hugs his mother, and even takes his wife out on a date. However, this does not last long and everyone’s doubts about the investment turning out to be a destructive decision are proven to be correct. Willy Harris flees with the money, leaving Walter with a yet again crushed dream. Not only does he find himself “crumple down to the floor as Ruth just covers her face in horror,” but Mama loses all faith in him and does not believe that buying a new house is best fit for the family anymore (Hansberry 110). This once more, connects back to the theme because Walter is now faced with a major crushed dream as well as a broken family. It is now that he comes to the realization that he should have persevered through and been more determined to accomplish one
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