Lorraine Hansberry's A Raisin In The Sun

832 Words4 Pages
During the Harlem Renaissance time period, in the play A Raisin in the Sun, a underprivileged African American family is introduced. The family is having financial troubles when Mr.Younger dies, leaving them a check with a lot of money. Throughout the play money plays a big role in influencing each character's actions, dreams, and thoughts. Money determines the path that Mama, Beneatha, and Walter's dreams and actions take. Mama wants to buy a nice house for her and her family to live in and now that she has the insurance money she can do that. She tries to convince her family that buying a house is the best thing to do. This is shown when Mama tries to explain to walter that, “it makes a difference in a man when he can walk around on floors…show more content…
At the beginning of the play Walter wants to make a lot of money for him and his family, the way he wants to go about doing that is by opening a liquor store with his friends. “You see, this little liquor store we got in mind cost seventy-five thousand, ten thousand each.” (Hansberry p.8) this shows how Walter always takes money into consideration and his plans for opening a liquor store . When Mama give Walter some of the insurance money it motivates him to invest in a liquor store and so he can give Travis what he wants. This is shown when Walter tell Travis, “your Daddy’s gonna make a transaction...a business transaction that’s going to change our lives, You just name it, son, and i hand you the world.” (Hansberry p.63) .Walter does not like to show Travis that they are poor. The money Walters dad worked hard to get also motivated him to not take Mr.Lindner's offer on the house because the house was bought with the money his dad left for them. “And we have decided to move into our house because my father- my father- he earned it for us brick by brick,” (Hansberry p.91), this shows how the money meant more to Walter and made him make the right decision for his
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