Preview

A Raisin In The Sun Quote Analysis

Good Essays
Open Document
Open Document
485 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
A Raisin In The Sun Quote Analysis
A Raisin in the Sun by Lorraine Hansberry, is a play set in the South Side of Chicago, in the late 1950’s. The play follows the lives of a poor, urban, African-American family, the Younger’s, during a period of heightened racial discrimination in the United States. In this passage, the matriarch of the family Lena Younger, also known as Mama, is arguing with her adult son Walter, about what to do with a windfall to be acquired from a life insurance policy on her deceased husband. This quote reflects the ideological differences between the two generations, about what is important in life.

At the start of the passage, the author writes, “Oh-So now it’s life. Money is life.” By using these words, Hansberry shows the conflicting views about

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Satisfactory Essays

    The play a Raisin in the Sun is a play written by Lorraine Hansberry. This story is about an African American family living in Southside Chicago. In the story, the family goes through many hardships especially when it comes to money. The Younger family lives in an overcrowded apartment which has very little room for all of them. There is a $10,000 check coming from the insurance company for Walter Lee’s dad’s death. He is the man of the house now and is determined to provide a better life for him and his family. Which he figures out at the end that money is not everything.…

    • 519 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    Many people have dreams that they want to accomplish. In A Raisin in the Sun, characters have a goal. Walter’s passion is to own a liquor store because he wants to be an entrepreneur. Beneatha’s dream is to become a doctor to help cure people. Mama pursues her dream of having a garden and a house. Each person’s aspiration is important to them. Thesis…

    • 858 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Everybody had dreams and aspirations, however those things never always go as planned. This happens to the characters in the play, A Raisin in the Sun. The play was written by Lorraine Hansburry, and it was the first Broadway play written by an African American woman. In the play, the Younger family, a family of five, live in a small two-bedroom apartment in Chicago. Mama, Lena, is about to receive an insurance check from her husband's death in the mail and has to decide what she is going to do with it. The check is seen as a beacon of hope to change their family's lives and make it much easier. Lena's son, Walter, wants to use it to leave his old job as a chauffer for a white man and invest in a liquor store, while Lena's daughter, Beneatha, wants to use it to help pay for her education to become a doctor. In the end, Mama entrusts some money to Walter and decides to buy a house in a white neighborhood to better accommodate their family because Walter's son had been sleeping on the living room couch. Walter's wife, Ruth, also goes through her own problems when she learns that she is expecting another child in a household that is already having a hard time getting by. A Raisin in the Sun is a great play that encompasses many themes of the African American working class culture in the United States. The play goes over important themes such as family, dreams, gender, race, and suffering, and A Raisin in the Sun connects all these themes to each other some way or another.…

    • 291 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Albert Einstein once said “Try not to become a man of success rather try to become a man of value.” A Raisin In the Sun was written by Lorraine Hansberry in nineteen fifty nine.The play explores the struggles of an African American family to achieve their dreams. In the play Walter Lee Younger Jr. the son of Mama(Lena) evolves throughout the trials and tribulations the family faces in the play.…

    • 276 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Throughout the reading of “Of Mice and Men”, written by John Steinbeck, I feel that the one quote that embodies the author’s message of the entire work is located towards the end of the novel. I find that the quote that embodies the message is, “He pulled the trigger.” (106). To me, this quote shows the loyalty of George to Lennie. In the beginning of the novel, we see that George has somewhat rescued Lennie, and taken him away from the danger that he was facing back in Weed.…

    • 313 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    The French author Victor Hugo once said, “There is nothing like a dream to create the future.” The quote means whenever you have a dream, the dream shapes and sets your future. Hugo’s quote is correct because dreams are the key to setting your goals so you can achieve further in the future. In Lorraine Hansberry’s play A Raisin in the Sun, this quote is true because of Walter’s dream to be the man of the house, Benethea’s dream to live past society’s expectations of an African American woman and become a doctor, and Mama’s dream is to have her family united as one.…

    • 536 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    John Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men takes place during the Dustbowl in California at a time of poverty. George and Lennie are two men who have just arrived at a ranch in Soledad for their new job. Lennie does not make a good first impression on the boss’s son. One theme the story suggests is that loneliness can cause negatively affects people.…

    • 908 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The play narrates the truth about a Negro family in the south side of Chicago. A Raisin in the sun, is a commentary on the failure of democracy and it is shown on the Younger’s family. They lack the access to an equal education system, they suffer from the residential segregation and bad living conditions…

    • 297 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    A Raisin in the Sun by Lorraine Hansberry is realistic fiction in which the play's title and characters represent the play's themes. The play focused on black Americans struggles to reach the American Dream of life liberty and the pursuit of happiness during the 1950’s and 1960’s. the idea of everyone having a the chance to achieve a better life should exist. Hansberry created her title using a line from Langston Hughes poem “ A Dream Deferred”. The original poem was written in 1951 about Harlem. Hughes line from the poem claimed that when dreams are deferred they become broken. This meant that they are lost/hopeless. Hughes poem further suggested that when dreams and goals are denied to be pursued people forget about them and put them off.…

    • 981 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    When I finished A Raisin in the Sun, I sat back and reflected on the primary thematic messages the author had shown. One of the themes I came across was the strength of a dream. Throughout the play, you are reminded of every dream each character has. Beneatha yearns to have a medical degree and become a doctor while Mama’s dream is for her children to be humble and grateful in a new home. Walter’s dream is to open up a liquor store and make money for his family to have a “better” life. Early on in the story, readers find out that Mama has a large check coming from her late husband’s life insurance. This excitement starts to create a large uproar of arguments in the family. The arguments ranged from Walter and Ruth to Mama and Walter to…

    • 1483 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    In a segregated 1950s Chicago, a small African-American family lives in a small 3 room apartment in a crowded apartment building. Award-winning A Raisin in the Sun, by Lorraine Hansberry, features Walter as a leader-to-be in this historically accurate playwright. The household consists of Mama, Walter’s wife and sister, Ruth and Beneatha, and Walter’s son Travis. Walter, the main contributor to the income of the household, and held responsible even though he is not seen as the leader or in…

    • 659 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    A raisin in the sun

    • 660 Words
    • 3 Pages

    Lorraine Vivian Hansberry was born May 19, 1930 in Chicago, Illinois the youngest by seven years, of four children. Her father, Carl A. Hansberry, is a successful real estate broker, and a civil right activist. Her mother, Nannie Perry, is a schoolteacher who entered politics and became a ward committee woman. When Lorraine was eight, her parents moved to a white neighborhood where the experiences of discrimination led to a civil rights suit that they won. The granddaughter of a freed slave and deeply committed to the Black struggle for equality and human rights, Lorraine Hansberry became a spokesperson for black Americans. Her writings reflect her fight for black civil rights, which is reflected by her views against racism and sexual and statutory discrimination. A Raisin in the Sun was first produced in 1959. The play personified many of the issues which were to divide American culture during the decade of the 1960s. Lorraine Hansberry, the playwright, was an unknown dramatist until she achieved unprecedented success when her play became a Broadway sensation. Not only were successful women playwrights rare at the time, but successful young black women playwrights were virtually unheard of. Within its context, the success of A Raisin in the Sun is particularly stunning. She used plot characters and setting to embody the struggles Blacks had to overcome while facing discrimination and an underlying desire to succeed beyond conception. The play occurs during the late 1950s, a time when many Americans were prosperous and when some racial questions were beginning to be raised, but before the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s. Maslow’s Hierarchy of needs is an excellent theory to analyze A Raisin in the Sun since needs and wants are the basics to human survival. Its core is that of humankind equality which crosses geographic, racial, gender, social, ethnic and religious backgrounds. The situational setting of A Raisin in the Sun makes Maslow’s theory of Hierarchy of…

    • 660 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Lorraine Hansberry portrays the revolution of black’s consciousness through the play, A Raisin in the Sun, by introducing the Younger family to readers. This play takes place in a poor black neighborhood in Chicago’s Southside in the 1950s where the Younger family struggles with racial discrimination and finding their true dreams and goals. Like most literature, this play has a clear protagonist, but Hansberry also uses an anti-hero, a flawed character who lacks heroic qualities, but with whom the reader still sympathizes and who eventually redeems himself through a heroic act or decision. With the weight of his deferred dreams upon his shoulders, Walter Lee Younger digs himself into a massive pit of troubles but slowly redeems himself by realizing the wrongs of his actions, making him the anti-hero of this play.…

    • 763 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    A Raisin in the Sun is a drama, a play, and a book that can reshape the way you think about people who are important to you. This magnificent story symbolizes how a family can go through a rough patch and at the end of the day continue to love and aid each other despite the circumstances.…

    • 620 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Raisin In The Sun

    • 488 Words
    • 2 Pages

    A Raisin in the Sun had allowed all people to view the average life of an African-American family in the 1950s. Lloyd Richards recalls in the Washington Post, “A white couple said to me, ‘I have never been in a black person’s home, and now you have permitted me to go into that home.’ It was also very important for black audiences because they could go see themselves onstage.” By viewing the struggles that the Youngers faced every day in the play, it gave an understanding to families not in the same situation. This play reveals the average life of an African-American family to all people who otherwise, would not have understood.…

    • 488 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays