Raisin In The Sun Vs Beneatha

Music in both “Heart of Darkness” and “A Raisin in the Sun” shows itself only briefly, but its relevance holds out longer than any framata ever could. Beneatha in “A Raisin in the Sun” expresses interest in learning to play the guitar. However, this is after pursuing a multitude of different hobbies and activities. When she is asked why she wants to learn how to play the guitar, she responds with: “I just want to, that’s all...I experiment with different forms of expression” (Hansberry 47-48). Beneatha responds this way at first to Mama not because she doesn’t have a specific reason, but because she does have one and doesn’t believe that Mama will understand. When Beneatha first participated in acting, it allowed her to be a different person,
Some guitars have more, others have less, but six is the most common. Now if we take each string and attach it to a person or thing, you get something like this: 1. Ruth. 2. Walter. 3. Travis 4. Beneatha. 5. Mama. 6. The money that they’re arguing about on how to spend it. Each string represents someone or something that is creating conflict; she is having conflict with, or simply a part of the family’s inner conflicts. Perhaps Beneatha subconsciously feels that if she can learn how to play the guitar, then she can learn to resolve the issues going on in her family, such as with the money. Whether you consider the number part of the guitar in the equation, music is a language in which Beneatha wants to express herself through. Would you have been able to understand the family dynamics with Beneatha if the guitar hadn’t been a part of the story? Yes, but without it, the reader isn’t exposed to the riveting undertow of Beneatha’s character and how she reacts with her family. Music is reveals an entire character’s backstory without expressly doing so. All you have to do is play the right note and you’ll be privy to boundless levels of
In the “Heart of Darkness” by Joseph Conrad, dark themes are explicitly expressed through the piano. “A grand piano stood massively in a corner; with dark gleams on the flat surfaces like a sombre and polished sarcophagus” (Conrad 159-160). At first glance, the piano symbolizes the recent passing of Kurtz. However, there’s so much more to the piano than being a simple coffin. The piano is Kurtz. Kurtz was the major player in the book; he controlled everything. His actions determined the outcome, just like a single note can start an echoing sea of trills or a rippling cascade of scales. This time, the piano was not the accompaniment, no, it was the soloist, the conductor, the grand murray of ivory. The piano--Kurtz was essentially all of this. The effect that Kurtz had on people and the ivory trade was massive, as this piano was. And when a master composer dies, his compositions don’t die with him. It’s no wonder then that someone kept the piano clean--gleaming--as it were because they can still hear his life, his actions running through their minds. When a masterful composition comes to an end, it cannot be so easily forgotten. This is because a person wants to keep the memory of it unblemished (keeping the piano’s surface gleaming), since how else could you be expected to remember the dark key signatures that swept over the piece and in turn, kept the reacting broken chords obedient; keeping them in their