Lorraine Hansberry's A Raisin In The Sun

1278 Words6 Pages
The American dream, an ideal that every US citizen can obtain “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” through hard work and determination, is a belief that many people desire. For some people, the dream becomes a nightmare where they enter a nation only to find exploitation and despair tracing back to slavery. Set in the 1950s- A Raisin in the Sun, by Lorraine Hansberry, depicts an impecunious African American family living in Chicago. A Raisin the Sun become a revolutionary work, mirroring the oppression of the African Americans. Their race, culture, sex and social status becomes a major hindrance impacting the Younger’s ability to achieve the American dream. Hansberry names the film after a line in the poem, “Harlem”, by the great Harlem Renaissance poet Langston Hughes. Hughes relates the poem to the struggles he has seen and experienced growing up in a country where social privileges, economically rights and political rights only pertained to the Anglo Saxon. Hughes suggests that African American cannot attain the…show more content…
Lena, played by Claudia McNeil, is old-fashioned woman who believes a man should be the lead of the house. She feels guilty for not allowing Walter be the “man” in the family and allows him to be charge of the rest of the money. Lena also instructs Walter to be the submissive role, and make the decision whether or not Lena should have an abortion should take place. This belittles Ruth as a person who can’t make decisions of her own. In the 1950s, Men were the sole providers of the family; this idea was conveyed by juxtaposing them with women, who were portrayed as being the antipodal. It was unlikely for a woman to take on “manly” jobs because society and culture insisted them to be a stay home and take care of the children as well as cook and clean. Even if women were working, there pay wage wasn’t nearly as much as the
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