Honors English 10
Steiner
Final Essay Final Essay
Identity, Dreams, and floating into Reality
“I don’t flit! I-I experiment with different forms of expression-...-people have to express themselves one way or another.” Beneatha is a college student who provides a young, independent, feminist perspective, and her desire to become a doctor demonstrates her great ambition. Throughout the A Raisin in the Sun written by Lorraine Hansberry, she searches for her identity. She is also faced with many struggles that allow her to find what she is truly looking for by the end of the book, which is her identity. Beneatha is constantly trying to find her identity even though her family does not tend to believe in her due to the fact that Beneatha “flits from one thing to another all the time.”
Beneatha is not taken very seriously in the beginning of the play when she wants to try new things and experiment because of the fact she tries so many different things and doesn’t tend to stick with them. She struggles with finding her identity and pursuing her dreams. “Well-I do-alright?-thanks everybody! And forgive me for ever wanting to be anything at all!...FORGIVE ME, FORGIVE ME, FORGIVE ME!” (37). Her family can’t seem to understand why she keeps trying new things when they feel as though she’ll just give up and start another new things again shortly. They can’t understand her because they don’t know what she is going through. She is being sarcastic in this quote while talking to her brother Walter and cannot believe her family won’t stand beside her as she wants to become a doctor. Mama even makes fun of Beneatha, “Lord, child, don’t you know what to do with yourself? How long it going to be before you get tired of this now-like you got tired of that little play-acting group you joined last year? (47). Beneatha’s family members don’t support her and don’t really believe in her when it comes to taking up something new in hopes of finding her