Week Fourteen Blog

ENG 113

Instructor Risch

Week Fourteen Blog

Comments on “A Raisin in the Sun” by Lorraine Hansberry.

Donna Stevens

April 20, 2011

In this play, Walter Lee is coming into his “manhood.” Walter’s family has been poor all their lives and now with a check coming in the mail that brings the opportunity of success in Walter’s eyes; he is wild with excitement. Walter believes that money is the key to happiness. He believes that if he has the opportunity to invest in something like the white people do, then his family can live better and he will feel more like a manly provider. He is willing to use his wife to beg his mother for the money. He is shameless in his pursuit of the money. When he finally received the money, he gave it to a man who skipped town with it. He is left to feel defeated and impotent again in the presence of his wife, son, sister and mother. When the home owners association offers to give the family a substantial amount of money not to move into the house his mother bought with what was left of the money that Walter did not throw away, Walter decides to snatch it up. Walter again dreams of becoming a man with the aid of money. As his mother makes him tell his son what he is about to do, Walter realizes how childish, selfish, and unmanly he is acting. His mother reveals to him through the eyes of his boy how he valued money over family. In the end, Walter chose his family over money. With this decision, he grew into his “manhood” as his mother said at the end of the play. Walter became a man in his own right because he learned to value family over money and he defined success as having a family that is happy instead of having an abundance of things. This play is a realistic drama because it is a racial drama that takes place in 1950’s America. The family is confronted by racism when the mother knowingly buys a house in a white neighborhood. The mother is daring to dream and feels entitled to live in a white neighborhood because her husband died for that money. She said earlier in the play that the money represented “what someone thought her husband was worth”, therefore she would not buy in a neighborhood that would disgrace the memory of him. If this play were set in modern times, the racial effect would not be nearly as severe. The neighbors would stare and probably grumble, but it is highly unlikely that they would raise enough money to buy the house back.

This story is mostly about Walter and how he defines success. He once thought that being rich would make him a successful leader in his home and a respected man of the community. However, he learned the definition of success is learning to be content with what you have and learning to treasure your loved ones more than silver and gold. Walter’s foils were his buddies that he met and planned to start the liquor store with. It was in those scenes that one could see the desperation reveal itself in Walter’s eyes. He was willing to risk it all even money that his dad died to give him to be successful with money. Walter’s son was also a huge foil for him. Early in the play, Ruth refused to give Travis money for a cause at school because they “did not have it.” Walter protested and was foiled as the insecure father who over compensated for his insecurity with a dollar given to Travis which resulted in him having to ask Ruth for bus fare. Walter did not want Travis to know how poor they were because the reality would reveal him as a poor provider. In this play, the raisin was Walter and he grew in the sunlight of his hardships into a man who his family and more importantly he could be proud of.