Walter Younger In Lorraine Hansberry's A Raisin In The Sun

Walter Younger can be really hard to get along with. For most of the first act, he's rude and stirs up tension to just about every other character in the play. Walter fights against the demons of poverty and racial/social injustice that plagued his father and now seem to have a tight grip upon him.Walter describes himself as a volcano as he internalizes his regrets and pipe dreams. Walter never sees any way out of his economic distress other than the liquor store, which his mother opposes solely on moral grounds.Frustrated by his dead end job, he actively seeks alternatives for change because he realizes he has to make things happen to better his family's life. He believes, for example, that through his business idea, he will suddenly accumulate all the money he will ever need. Then, with this sudden accumulation of capital, he will improve himself socially and will be looked up to by others. He believes, finally be able to provide material necessities and even luxuries for …show more content…
Walter is so blinded by the American Dream that he becomes determined to open a liquor store. He states “Yeah. You see, this little liquor store we got in mind cost seventy-five thousand and we figured the initial investment on the place be ‘bout thirty thousand, see. That be ten thousand each. Course, there’s a couple of hundred you got to pay so’s you don’t spend your life just waiting for them clowns to let your license get approved”(Hansberry, Pg.79).Walter believes that investing a whole lot of money will earn his family their fortune. He gets a lot of crap from his family about this idea from his family, but on paper it's really not a terrible idea. Unfortunately, Walter's would-be business partner, Willy Harris, turns out to be a total crook. In the end, the Youngers remain in