Lorraine Hansberry's A Raisin In The Sun

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Lorraine Hansberry gave A Raisin in the Sun its title based on a few lines in a poem by Langton Hughes. The poem inquired what happens to a “dream deferred”, and in A Raisin in the Sun, Hansberry answers this question on four different levels from four different points of view. Walter Lee Younger’s dream was to be rich and powerful. In the book, since he has yet to reach that goal, he struggles to grasp at any opportunity to achieve it in a hurry and tends to let himself down in the process. After a night at the bar Walter comes home in a drunken stupor to find George Murchison sitting in the kitchen. Walter begins to hassle him about his white shoes and Gorge calls him Bitter. Walter replies “Bitter? Here I am a giant – surrounded by ants! Ants who can’t even understand what it is the giant is talking about” (Act 2, Scene 1). Walter expresses his own self exclaimed superiority over the members of his family who, in Walter’s mind, are too small minded to even begin to understand the ideas he has conjured up in his head. By belting this out in particular to George, Walter believes he has proven his point that he can do everything George can do,…show more content…
Unfortunately, Willy stole his mother’s money for an investment and took off with it. Walter’s spirit breaks upon news of the betrayal and eventually he resorts to these words, “Talking ‘bout life, Mama. . . . Mama, you know it’s all divided up. Life is. Sure enough. Between the takers and the “tooken.” I’ve figured it out finally. Yeah. Some of us always getting “tooken” (Act 3). His strive for power and money has been drained from him at these words. He no longer has the drive to earn the money, but more or less to take it, like it was taken from him. The power struggle changes from one of honest work and progress to one of selfish gain and unprincipled actions, all in quest of his
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