Lorraine Hansberry's A Raisin In The Sun

The play "A Raisin In The Sun", by Lorraine Hansberry is a perfect embodiment of the Langston Hughes' poem "A Raisin In the Sun" because each of the characters experiences the reality of their dreams being too big to achieve in a country dominated by the white Americans. One of the earliest and most obvious examples of this is Walter Younger, who feels misunderstood throughout most of the play. For Walter, everything has always been about money and he believes that wealth is the solution to everything. His dream was to invest the ten thousand dollars, that was left for his mother from his late father, into an alcohol business with a man named Willy. Throughout the play, no one listens to his dream of investing or makes an effort to understand where he's coming from. When he finds out that his mother spent the money on her dream of buying a house, he explodes on everyone and spends the next three days drinking. Eventually his mother pity's him and decides to let him be the man of the house now by leaving him in charge of all of the money that she had left, including Beneatha's college funds. Walter spends all of the money on the investment - only to have it be stolen by Willy. As a result, Walter grows as a person because, though he is moneyless on account of his mistake, he stands up to the white man who tried to pay them not to move into their new home - located in an all-white neighborhood. Thus, based off of Langston Hughes' poem, when one asks the question "what happens to a dream deferred?", the answer that I drew from this play is that a dream deferred will make the targeted individual stronger - just like Walter. This same answer can be found in Beneatha's case because she lost all of her college funds due to Walter's poor investment; as a result, she
"A Raisin In The Sun" The Norton Anthology Of African American Literature, edited by Henry Louis Gates, Jr., and Valerie A. Smith, vol. 2, third edition, pp.