A Raisin In The Sun Lena Younger Essay

She provides for her family constantly. She plays the role of a typical 1950’s woman well. Whenever she has visitors she always offers them food. For instance, when Gabriel visits, she asks, “You hungry, Gabe? I was just fixing to cook Troy his breakfast” (26).

A Raisin in the Sun depicts a couple of weeks in the life of the Youngers, an African-American family living on the South Side of Chicago in the 1950s. At the point when the play opens, the Youngers are going to get a protection check for $10,000. This cash originates from the perished Mr. More’s youthful life coverage approach. Each of the grown-up individuals from the family has a thought in the matter of what he or she might want to do with this cash. The female authority of the family, Mama, needs to purchase a house to satisfy a fantasy she imparted to her spouse.

The world stereotypes rich people as rude, stuck up and selfish. Ever wonder why? Studies from Yale, The New York Times, TED and more have concluded, money changes everything. Whether it’s attitude, morals or values, money can affect and change all aspects of someone’s life. The play, A Raisin in the Sun, has a theme showing this claim clearly.

Lenas irritability in cramped spaces, Ruth’s discovery of an extra child on the way, Benny’s desire to fulfill her dreams, and Walters entrepreneurial spirit are brought to light and fight when Lena Younger finds out she is due to inherit $10,000 from her late husbands insurance policy. Lena, lovingly reffered to as Mama throughout the play, she takes $3,500 and put it towards the downpayment of a fine house in the all white neighborhood of Clyborne Park, so that her daughter-in-law Ruth does not have to abort her second child. She also plans to put $3,000

Mama buying the house made Travis and Ruth super happy, that is a positive to Mama buying the house. In “A Raisin in The Sun” on page 91, Ruth shows excitement by saying “PRAISE GOD! Please, honey--let me be glad... you be glad too” (Hansberry 91).

In the play Raisin in the Sun written by Lorraine Hansberry takes place on the southside of Chicago where Walter and his family are racially profiled and show us how the survive throughout their struggles. The central struggles for the younger family in their search for the American dream is mostly poverty and being racially profiled against for their actions. Hansberry challenges the traditional gender roles and issues of dominance throughout the play when Mama gives Walter lee the rest of the money at the end of the play. He becomes all excited and was supposed to save some for himself and put the rest of the money to Beneatha 's education. Instead, he gave all that money to Willy another character in the play which later on that he stole from him.

“A Raisin in the Sun,” written by Lorraine Hansberry in 1959, was the first play ever produced on Broadway by an African-American woman and was considered ground-breaking for it’s time. Titled after Langston Hughes’ poem “Harlem,” sometimes known as “A Dream Deferred,” the play and the subsequent film adaptations are honest examinations of race, family, poverty, discrimination, oppression and even abortion in urban Chicago after WWII. The original play was met with critical praise, including a review by Brooks Atkinson of the New York Times where he wrote, “For A Raisin in the Sun is a play about human beings who want, on the one hand, to preserve their family pride and, on the other hand, to break out of the poverty that seems to be their fate. Not having any axe to grind, Miss Hansberry has a wide range of topics to write about-some of them hilarious, some of them painful in the extreme.” The original screen adaptation released in 1961 was highly acclaimed in its own right, and was chosen in 2005 for preservation in the United States of America National Film Registry by the Library of Congress for its cultural and historical significance.

The hidden meanings in the references that authors write about, when they write their novels or plays, change how a play or book is thought of and also commences the development of better critical thinking skills.. In the play, A Raisin In The Sun, Lorraine Hansberry uses many different types of literary devices for the play to have a deeper meaning or idea than what is just read. Taking place during the 1950’s in Southside Chicago, the play is about an African American family who live through many struggles, racially and financially. When the father dies and the Younger family receives $10,000, their hopes and dreams are possible and may come true. It is until they lose their money that they realized they “aimed to high”(140), especially Mama and Walter Younger.

Mama doesn’t work, what she does is butcher hogs and milk cows. “I used to love to milk till I was hoofed in the side” (Walker, 316, 13). Mama is also the narrator of this story. Mama sticks more into religion and is more traditional than her two daughters, mama thinks that Dee is a failure in life and she sees that the way Dee acts she is rejecting her families tradition.

This is seen by the actions she takes to get to her goal, statements she makes towards her family members, and how she responds to her family when they are troubled. Mama has lived in her apartment for a long time with her family and is about to get enough money to change that. An example of Mama’s motivation to achieve her goal is shown when Ruth, her daughter-in-law and Mama are talking about what Mama would do with the insurance money. Mama states, “Been thinking that we maybe could meet the notes on a little old two-story somewhere, with a yard where Travis could play in the summertime, if we use part of the insurance for a down payment and everybody kind of pitch in” (563). Mama is suggesting to Ruth of what could be a better future for her son and their family.

Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun presents the rise of feminism in America in the 1960s. A Raisin in the Sun is feminist because, with the feminist notions displayed in the play, women establish their rights to fulfil their individual dreams which diverge from traditional conventions of that time. Beneatha Younger, Lena Younger (Mama) and Ruth Younger are the three primary characters displaying evidences of feminism in the play. Moreover, Hansberry creates male characters who demonstrate oppressive attitudes towards women yet enhance the feminist ideology in the play. A Raisin in the Sun is feminist because, the play encourages women to develop an identity for themselves, particularly through education and career.

Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun presents the rise of feminism in America in the 1960s. Beneatha Younger, Lena Younger (Mama) and Ruth Younger are the three primary characters displaying evidences of feminism in the play. Moreover, Hansberry creates male characters who demonstrate oppressive attitudes towards women yet enhance the feministic ideology in the play. A Raisin in the Sun is feminist because, with the feminist notions displayed in the play, women can fulfil their individual dreams that are not in sync with traditional conventions of that time.

Family is important to everyone in some way because family sticks together no matter what. The play A Raisin in the Sun is about a black family named the Youngers and the hardships they face together as a family. In A Raisin in the Sun by Lorraine Hansberry, Ruth Younger is motivated by her family. This is shown by Ruth wanting to make her family happy, her working even though she is tired, and later when Ruth finds out there is going to be another mouth to feed. Ruth Younger is constantly worrying about her family’s well being and happiness for them.

Reader Response: 3 “A Raisin in the Sun” by Lorraine Hansberry, is a play about a black families experience in 1950s South Side Chicago. The story revolves around what happens to the family when Lena Younger, the matriarch of the family, receives a ten thousand dollar life insurance check upon the death of her husband. Everyone from the family has different plans for what they want to do with the money. Lena Younger serves as the head of the family. She is Walter and Beneatha’s caring mother so they and Ruth call her Mama.

Just within the recent decades, men and women started to fight against the gender stereotypes and started to challenge their roles in a family and in the society. The play, A Raisin in the Sun, portrays the lives of African–Americans during the 1950s. Lorraine Hansberry, a writer and a social activist, reinforced the traditional gender roles, especially female’s, by depicting how the Youngers interact and how they act in an economical struggle. Throughout the play, A Raisin in the Sun, she uses Walter Lee Younger, Ruth Younger and Lena Younger to reinforce the traditional role of fathers, wives and mothers within a family.