Raisin In The Sun Allusion

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A Raisin in the Sun by Lorraine Hansberry portrays a struggling family, made up of individuals with very different and important dreams. This renowned play shows the role of visions in life. Both the numerous dreams within the Younger household and each family members’ desire for their own respective goal prevented most of the primary characters from living out their dreams. This left multiple hopes still out there, unachieved, and providing the major theme of the play. The title, A Raisin in the Sun, comes from the poem, Dream Deferred by Langston Hughes, and serves as an allusion for the reader to the brilliant poem. The title of this play is a line in the famous poem, Dream Deferred, and gets the reader to ponder the verse while reading the play. Hughes briefly describes a deferred or unfulfilled dream in her writing. When a reader sees a line from Dream Deferred, specifically the famed Raisin in the Sun line, they will immediately think of Dream Deferred. This allusion perfectly shifts the reader’s mind to the poem, just as Lorraine Hansberry brilliantly intended. Lorraine Hansberry did not just pick any random poem. Rather, she chose Dream Deferred because it shares the same message or theme of A Raisin in the Sun.…show more content…
Hughes uses imagery such as the phrase, A Raisin in the Sun to show the how the dream would dry up and lose its glimmer just like the raisin. All of Hughes’s examples involve the aspiration changing, maybe because of outside influences, or because of updated expectations. This theme of a changed or unfulfilled dream is the message that Langston Hughes is sending the reader. Hughes is conveying that if an individual does not achieve their mission in life and create their own destiny, their goals and future will be altered for the
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