Lorraine Hansberry's A Raisin In The Sun

1010 Words5 Pages
A Essay: Tragedy of A Dreamer No matter how much effort they make, there are always some people who cannot get ahead in life. In Lorraine Hansberry’s play A Raisin in the Sun which is set in Southern Chicago in a period between 1950 and 1951, Walter Lee Young, the protagonist of the book, is a man who “cannot get ahead in life”. He is frustrated by his position in life. However, his pursuit of materialism and goal to prove his worth as a man illustrate his image as the biggest dreamer in the book. Walter Lee Younger’s identity as a dreamer directly leads to his vehemence toward his family and causes him to have many goals without him having the ability to achieve any of them. First and foremost, Walter Lee’s…show more content…
The major reason Walter was overloaded with desire was his insecurity in his position in life and his family. He is dying to prove his worth as a man and therefore behaves desperately to prove that he can do things to prove his capability of being the head of the family. He wants to be the decision maker of both his own life and the family. And his idea on his negligible role and inferiority at home irritates him even more. When he shouts to mama, Walter:” You are the head of this family. You run our lives like you want to. It was your money and you did what you wanted with it. So what you need for me to say it was all right for?” (Hansberry 95) In addition, Walter’s incorrect love of materialism stimulated his ambitiousness. Walter’s speech recalls his earlier assertion that money is “life”. He emphasizes the overriding importance of money, which he believes carries more weight than moral distinctions between right or wrong. Walter:”Mama, you know it’s all divided up. Life is, Sure enough. Between the takers and the “tooken.” Yeah, Some of us always getting “tooken”. (He laughs) People like Willy Harris, they don’t never get “tooken.” And you know why the rest of us do?’ Cause we all mixed up. Mixed up bad. We get to looking ‘round for the right and the wrong; and we worry about it and cry about it and stay up trying to figure out ‘bout the…show more content…
Walter Lee placed his dream and ambition superior to everything else in his life, he was criticized as a selfish man but he keeps being selfish. The causes of most of the conflicts in the play are the results of his stubbornness toward his dreams. He has the dream of changing the whole family’s future and faith through fighting against poverty. His major motivation is the idea of offering Travis a better future. He promises his son everything and even promises to hand him the world when without any actual ability to do that. He may sounds like a braggart, but his wish to prove his worth as a father is obvious when he says:“Just tell me where you want to go to school and you’ll go….You just name it, son...and I hand you the world!(Walter’s voice has risen in pitch and hysterical promise and on the last line he lifts Travis high)(Hansberry 63) Walter’s other impetus for his ambition is the racial injustice in the society. He wants to change the world. “This morning, I was lookin’ in the mirror and thinking about it…...I’m thirty-five years old; I been married eleven years and I got a boy who sleeps in the living room--(Very quietly)--and all I got to give him is stories about how rich white people live…”(Hanberry 34)By restating the current financial awkwardness he goes through, his desparaness and urgency to
Open Document