Lorraine Hansberry's A Raisin In The Sun

Decent Essays
Walter lived with his mother, sister, and wife and son they lived in a crowded two room apartment. No one saw the way Walter did about his liquor store idea. Walter honestly felt his dream is what was best for his family, but no one wanted to hear about it. He tried to get his family to listen to him but everyone was too busy to listen always doing their own thing. Lena went off and bought a house, even though she knew she had crushed Walters dream, but she felt heron had lost his way of god so she gave him the money to go follow his dream anyway. Unfortunately, one of Walters business partners ran off with his money so he lost everything. Walter had used all the money his mother gave him and felt as if he had let down his whole family. Walter

Related Documents

  • Improved Essays

    Walter is not happy with his conditions. He thinks that the money will help him leave the area that he is in. He wants to make an investment in a liquor store with the help of the people known for schemes. Although his mother does not agree with the plan, he has confidence in…

    • 779 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Walter wants the money to invest in a liquor store. Although Ruth morally disagrees with the idea of a liquor store, she supports Walter’s dream; perhaps this can bring more income in for the family. Mama, being the head of the household, makes the first move with the check by making a deposit on a house in a white neighborhood. Walter is devastated that his dream is ruined, and this leads to his drinking problems. To make Walter better, Mama gives Walter the rest…

    • 1392 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Walter Younger can be really hard to get along with. For most of the first Act, he’s nasty to just about every other character in the play. He picks fights with his sister, Bennie. He says all kinds of mean things to Ruth, his wife, and is even short with his long suffering mother, Lena.…

    • 505 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    In conclusion, Walter learns sometimes dreams are not meant to be and sometimes it’s better to let go. Walter starts out as a man who will do anything in his power to own a liquor store. He takes the money Mama gave him and ends up losing all of it. His family cannot believe what happened and Walter tries to fix it. Walter being the money-happy man he is, tries to solve his problem by accepting the money from the community.…

    • 782 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    He is his own obstacle to his dream, as his tends to ignore the opposing views of the family. Walter wants to be rich and successful, but gets by with schemes and bad investments, which fail time and time…

    • 487 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    This also adds to how Walter feels about his dreams and how they are continuously shut down. His goal to get his dream is to also invest into a liquor store that also shows how logical his thinking is when it comes to what he is trying to…

    • 1069 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    While wallowing in his frustration over failing to escape poverty, Walter reveals his resentment that he works hard at his job and still cannot provide his son with a bed or his own room. He later confesses how upsetting it is to him that he cannot get ahead and that he is always “tooken” (Hansberry 141). In a fit of rage after he squandered away the family’s money, Walter declares that he has learned a valuable lesson from the conman who stole his money: the world is divided into two types of people the “takers” and the “tooken,” and it does not matter how you get the money as long as you are the one who ends up with it (Hansberry 141). Like Hughes says, all Walter can see is “the same old stupid plan.”…

    • 1070 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Superior Essays

    Walker is determined to become very wealthy and he will “have nothing less than the complete American dream” (Washington 114). He wants to use his father’s insurance money to open a liquor store. He thinks that becoming wealthy will give him some sort of escape from his daily routine in his life. This causes many problems between Mama, Beneatha, and his wife, Ruth. Far from being a great listener, Walter does not realize he must listen to his family’s concerns to help them out with their problems.…

    • 1044 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Walter feels emasculated by Mama since she will not give him the $100,000 proceeds she receives from a life insurance policy on her deceased husband. While Walter wants to invest this money in a new liquor store business, Mama thinks the money better spent to purchase a new home for their extended family. Walter confronts Mama that she has both butchered his dreams, as well as fully assumed the role of head of household that Mama purports to want Walter to assume. Mama observes her son falling deeper and deeper into despair, and the fabric of the greater Younger family fraying. As a result, Mama has a change of heart about what to do with the inheritance, and how best to save her crumbling family.…

    • 628 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Great Essays

    Walter adapts himself to the unfair and unsatisfactory society to live. Moreover, he believes that only money, not learning and education, can make him to live in better life. When his mother, Lena, recognizes that his final goal is being rich person, she tells him that freedom and human dignity are most important not money in the life such as the other African Americans struggling “to define themselves with respect to their newly acquired freedom” (Gourdine 535). However, when he replies her that "[life] was always money," the sentence shows how he has lived for only money not psychological maturity (Hansberry 950).…

    • 2305 Words
    • 10 Pages
    Great Essays
  • Improved Essays

    African American Dream

    • 462 Words
    • 2 Pages

    She had grown up her whole life living as a black woman and was ready for a family house. Would that house really benefit the family? Yes, having a new house would be nice but they aren’t gaining any future money from it where in Walter’s dream there could be continous money. Buying a house would bring a family happiness but getting money and later on buying a better house with the future money will make the family much happier.…

    • 462 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The family has many big dreams. Walter Lee Younger has a dream of opening a liquor store, but this dream almost tears the family apart. The mother of Walter, Mama Younger has a dream of owning her own home. Walter’s sister Beneatha wants to someday be a doctor, which was very unlikely during this time period. Walter’s wife, Ruth has a dream of owning a home away from supporting her husband’s dream while taking good care of her and Walter’s son Travis.…

    • 1006 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    People may only see the negativity in which Walter has put on his family. He has done nothing but cause them to go through a ton of rough patches. Throughout most of the play, Walter only really cares about what he wants, and he assumes it’s what everyone wants as well. He labels his dream as everyone else's dreams. By putting his dreams in front of everyone else's, it causes conflicts to brew between them all.…

    • 1587 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Walter says, “I got me a dream{...} I got to take hold of this here world, baby {...} I got to change my life, I’m choking to death, baby(1.1.83). Walter really struggles, he makes bad choices and is very addicted to alcohol solving his problems. Walter Lee would leave the house to go and drink and, Mama didn’t approve of this, saying, “It’s dangerous when a man goes outside his home to look for peace” (1.2.215-7). He had so much rage towards Mama, Beneatha, and Ruth. Ruth, his loving wife, never left his side and always supported him for everything, except for when he wanted to use his mother 's money to invest in a liquor store.…

    • 1462 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    She feels she must apologize for having dreams, however; in reality everyone has a dream, and Walter’s pursuit in his dreams has caused him to become oblivious to his own sister’s goals and many individuals around…

    • 841 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Superior Essays