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A Raisin in the Sun. Walter Lee Younger Essay Example

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A Raisin in the Sun. Walter Lee Younger Essay Example
Walter Lee: frustrated, angry, quixotic.
Do you have a dream or an idea that you think would work but no one else understands? If you do, then you would get along with Walter Lee Younger wonderfully. Set entirely in the Younger living room, this play takes place in a run-down apartment in the South side of Chicago during the middle of the twentieth century. Three generations of the family live in this crowded space.
Walter Lee Younger is a chauffeur and Lena’s son. He is a slim, intense, thirty-five year-old black man. Walter believes the answer to his feelings of desperation and hopelessness as a slum resident and employee in a dead-end job is to be affluent. He has contempt for the women in his family, who he thinks, do not support his aspiration to break from his working-class life to become a prosperous businessman. To realize his lucrative dream, he wants to use the insurance money to invest in a liquor store with two of his friends.(Brantingham 467) Walter is a very frustrated person. As stated in the text it says, “WALTER (Straightening up from her and looking off) that's it. There you are. Man say to his woman: I got me a dream. His women say: eat your eggs. (Sadly, but gaining in power) Man say: I got to take hold of this here world, baby! And a woman will say: Eat your eggs and go to work. (Passionately now) Man say: I got to change my life, I’m choking to death, baby! And his woman say – (in utter anguish as he brings his fists down on his thighs) – Your eggs is getting cold!” (Hansberry 83) Here, Walter seems to accuse not only Ruth but all woman of holding back their men. He implies that women are only interested in domestic things and do not have a head for the big picture. Therefore, making him seemed frustrated. Is this healthy frustration or unhealthy rage?
“Frustration is the feeling that accompanies an experience of being thwarted in attaining your goals” (Wordnetweb.princeton.edu)
The second characteristic of Walter Lee

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