A Raisin in the Sun
Walter Character Analysis “No—it was always money, Mama. We just didn’t know about it” (1497). In Lorraine Hansberry’s “A Raisin in the Sun” the character Walter serves as both a hero and a villain throughout the play. He and his family are poverty stricken and after the death of his father, he is the man of the house. Walter suffers from an unhealthy obsession with wealth and has a greedy lust for it that often clouds his judgement. In his vision of the world, money can buy happiness and he firmly believes that if he were rich, he would be capable of being the loving family man he always wanted to be. Because of this, when the sudden windfall arrives in the form of his late father’s life insurance check, all of Walter’s …show more content…
He is both the bad guy with great redeeming qualities and the good guy with a healthy host of shortcomings. His actions throughout the play serve almost exclusively as detriment to his family and himself, until a final redeeming moment when he realizes the error of his ways and makes a final redeeming stand that not only makes a statement about the pride of himself and his family, but about African-American culture as a whole. He realizes his greedy ways were not doing anything to benefit his way of life and that taking the money from Mr. Lindner would only serve to perpetuate his failing methods. His decision making singlehandedly brought his family to their lowest point and then turned it right around and took them to their peak in a single fell swoop. Every character in “A Raisin in the Sun” makes mistakes, but Walter, without a doubt, consistently makes the worst of them all, but in the end he is the character that experiences the most spectacular transformation. He goes from distraught and pitiful, to a man worthy of respect. Mama realizes this about Walter, confiding in Ruth that “He finally came into his manhood today, didn’t he? Kind of like a rainbow after the rain…”
Walter Character Analysis “No—it was always money, Mama. We just didn’t know about it” (1497). In Lorraine Hansberry’s “A Raisin in the Sun” the character Walter serves as both a hero and a villain throughout the play. He and his family are poverty stricken and after the death of his father, he is the man of the house. Walter suffers from an unhealthy obsession with wealth and has a greedy lust for it that often clouds his judgement. In his vision of the world, money can buy happiness and he firmly believes that if he were rich, he would be capable of being the loving family man he always wanted to be. Because of this, when the sudden windfall arrives in the form of his late father’s life insurance check, all of Walter’s …show more content…
He is both the bad guy with great redeeming qualities and the good guy with a healthy host of shortcomings. His actions throughout the play serve almost exclusively as detriment to his family and himself, until a final redeeming moment when he realizes the error of his ways and makes a final redeeming stand that not only makes a statement about the pride of himself and his family, but about African-American culture as a whole. He realizes his greedy ways were not doing anything to benefit his way of life and that taking the money from Mr. Lindner would only serve to perpetuate his failing methods. His decision making singlehandedly brought his family to their lowest point and then turned it right around and took them to their peak in a single fell swoop. Every character in “A Raisin in the Sun” makes mistakes, but Walter, without a doubt, consistently makes the worst of them all, but in the end he is the character that experiences the most spectacular transformation. He goes from distraught and pitiful, to a man worthy of respect. Mama realizes this about Walter, confiding in Ruth that “He finally came into his manhood today, didn’t he? Kind of like a rainbow after the rain…”