Courage Nelson Mandela once stated that, “I learned that courage was not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it”. In Ernst Gaines’ novel, “A Lesson Before Dying”, the most important lesson to learn before dying is courage. The novel shows this through the characters Tante Lou, Miss. Emma, and Jefferson. First of all, Tante Lou shows courage by being with Miss. Emma, working hard to get Grant through university, and she believes God will help everything.…
A Raisin in the Sun Title Controversy; Emotion v. Plot Titles are not to be taken lightly as they are what a reader keeps in mind throughout a piece. “Mother to Son” and “Harlem” are both written by Langston Hughes and portray the struggles of maintaining a dream during difficult times. “Mother to Son” uses the extended metaphor of a staircase that parallels the struggles and overall actions in the play A Raisin in the Sun by Lorraine Hansberry, while “Harlem” uses graphic images in order to form a well developed motif and mood of the idealistic dream, which is matched in the play. As a title is meant to add to a piece of work, and enhance a certain idea the author deems significant, Lorraine Hansberry contemplated using the title The Crystal…
I watched the film A Raisin in the Sun written by Lorraine Hansberry and produced in 1961 by Columbia Pictures Corporation and I also read the play. Although similarities between the play and the film exist, I have also found distinctions which allow each of the versions of A Raisin in the Sun by Lorraine Hansberry to stand on its own. In the play, the entire story happens in the Younger’s living room, in Chicago’s Southside, where in the 1950s it was the home of poor, black people. The film, in contrast, had different sets: Walter’s and Ruth’s bedroom, Beneatha’s and Mama’s bedroom, the bar, Walter at work, and the new house.…
Mama loves her family and shows she doesn’t care about money and just cares about her family, showing she has morals because she shares her money with her children, she is tough love on them and she always thinks about them. Mama shares her money with her children because when she received ten thousand dollars she didn’t knew what to do with them. ” We was going to set away, little by little don’t you know and buy a little place out in Morgan Park.” (Hansberry, 45). Mama wants to share this house with her family and make sure they are well.…
When triggered, Walter transforms into being aggressive and defensive. Often, he doesn’t listen or attempt to see the other person’s perspective, causing him to have difficulties controlling his temper, inevitably resulting in a tirade. As Walter begins to describe his plan to own a liquor shop with Bobo and Willy Harris, Ruth corrects a mistake he has made and Walter makes a rude comment about how little women know about businesses. As Walter imitates Ruth’s behavior, he becomes impatient and interrupts her; “(Not listening at all or even looking at her) This morning, I was lookin’ in the mirror and thinking about it……
It is often argued that the five most important elements of each and every story ever told are character, setting, plot, theme, and conflict. All of these components work in harmony to come together and convey stories to readers, giving tales the backbones they need in order to exist. However, there is one more element of a story that can play just as crucial a role in effectively expressing a narrative: the point of view in which the story is told. In Jandy Nelson’s I’ll Give You the Sun, readers are introduced to two different narrators, twins Noah and Jude, whose accounts take place at two different points in time. However, these two separate narratives come together to form one cohesive story, which would not be pieced together without…
The family is struggling with money because their jobs don’t pay very much. Everyone works very hard just gets by living in the crowded apartment. Lena, Walter’s mother, suddenly receives a large amount of insurance money from the death of her husband. Lena and Walter had different ideas of how to spend the money. Lena wants to buy a house for the family and put Beneatha through medical school but Walter wants to open a liqueur store.…
The play, A Raisin in the Sun by Lorraine Hansberry is set in Chicago’s Southside between World War 2 and the 1950s. During this time period there was many segregation issues for black people. This play has many characters but there is only two that influenced the plot the most, these characters are Walter and Mama. Mama is the mother of Walter and Beneatha, the grandmother of Travis, and the mother-in-law of Ruth.…
Therefor, he shall not do it. Walter tells Mr. Linder that he will not be selling him their home and ask him to leave. Now the family is left with no money, but it doesn’t matter because they have each other and they are very happy that Walter thought about them when he made this…
The play “A Raisin In the Sun” and the poem “Harlem” both concentrate on the attainment of the forever promised “American Dreams” (higher education, prosperity, equality, freedom to come and go as you desire and to be whoever and whatever you want). These aspirations were and still are the hopes and goals society offers to all of us, unfortunately, many African-Americans rarely achieved and experienced them. Both writings depict the unfair treatment of African-Americans during the 1960’s with each implying how, discrimination and segregation, made achieving these dreams virtually insurmountable for most of the black population. The main difference between the play and the poem are the endings. The poem ends with a reference to the total destruction…
The family has a hard time following their dreams because they do not have the money to do so. Walter, being the man of the house works as hard as he can providing for his family and doing anything in…
Freedom is the option of have the right to make your own choices. Having such freedom to be able to choose on our own is a right that many do not have because of situational circumstances. In the short story “A Story of an Hour” by Kate Chopin the reader sees a woman morns for her husband’s death. In the poem “To His Coy Mistress” by Andrew Marvell a nameless man ask a nameless women to be with him even though a woman cannot be with a man before she was married during that time period. A play Oedipus the King by Sophocles explains how a Greek King must choose between facing his faith and his choice of free will.…
Acquired Fate Living with your entire family cramped up in a tight space can usually cause issues to develop between the whole household, it’s an unavoidable situation.. Although issues develop, families are strong, they’re able to pull through anything they undergo. The author Lorraine Hansberry wrote the play, A Raisin in the Sun, about a colored family from the Southside of Chicago being given a great deal of money after a family members passing. Though this family now has money, it stirs up a few complications. Little did they know they had a bond strong enough to function well together.…
Adichie’s novel Half of a Yellow Sun is told with true brilliance through her use of pendulum narration, moving from one character narration to the other. The three key narrators of her novel are divergent in every sense – adding to the richness of the books storytelling as their lives interweave through the use of an extradiegetic narration. Ugwu takes us through the life and experiences of an adolescent houseboy coming of age. Olanna shows us the world of a well-educated and privileged woman whose life is irrevocably changed during the tragic events of the Igbo massacres and Biafra war, and Richard, an Englishman and writer, who adopts Biafra as his home country. Each character narrates various pieces of the story and “become dependent on…
Lorraine Hansberry, African American playwright and writer, was the first African American woman to have a play produced on Broadway. Lorraine Hansberry completed her first play in 1957, which opened in March of 1959, taking her title from Langston Hughes ' poem, "Harlem” and that play was A Raisin in the Sun. Lorraine Hansberry was a great playwright that lived a short life. Hansberry died at the age of 34 but her work lived on.…