In A Raisin In The Sun the Younger family lives in Chicago on the south side in a small two bedroom apartment. Walter Lee Younger is the son of Lena and Walter Younger, whom are the original tenants of the apartment that the Youngers now reside in. The current tenants of the apartment are Walter Lee, his wife Ruth, his sister and his mother Beneatha and Lena, and his son Travis. Poverty is the only reality that the Younger family knows, and Walter lets this truth drive his very existence and leads him to some rather bad business decisions.
The major theme of this play is the value and purpose of dreams. Walter’s continued existence is the struggle to escape the poverty that he was born with. He spends countless hours talking with men in similar situations trying to come up with ideas that would effectively remove them from poverty and into upper-class wealth and society. The rest of the family doesn’t agree with his ideas of buying liquor stores due to some stern Christian values instilled into them by Mama. When the family gets an insurance check for ten thousand dollars everyone in the family has their own idea about how to spend the money. In the
One of the major symbols of this play is Mama’s plant. It symbolizes that though the plant it undernourished Mama will never stop trying and that she will always be there for the plant. This can be paralleled to he and her children. She only wants what is best for her children and would die to do have it done. this deliverance is shown through her care of such a ragged plant which mirrors the dysfunctional family that resides in the apartment. Another symbol is Beneatha’s hair. when she cuts it she is stating that she is trying to become more natural as a way of finding her racial identity. She views the haircut as a cleansing of all things unnatural and in effect leads her o find her self expression that she was so desperately looking or.
One of the major motifs of this play is the need for racial identity. The character that personifies this trait the most is Beneatha. She is scholarly and wants to become a doctor. She is also searching for her African roots with Asagai. She is unique because even with the poverty that the family suffers she is steadfast in her ways and contends that no matter how much her family pressures her to put her looks use and marry a rich brother she will not without first loving him. Walter too is searching for his racial identity th
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