The Sun Essay, Research Paper
Dreams and Dignity
The American Dream, although different for each one of us, is what we all aspire to accomplish. In the movie A Raisin in the Sun, the Younger household, who are black, all have a dream to better themselves and to hold what all other American households want + a shooting at the American Dream. The American Dream to the Younger household is to have a place, but beyond that, to Walter Younger, it is to be accepted by the hegemony and non to be marginalized into a lower societal class.
In an article from The Wall Street Journal entitled The American Dream, President Clinton refers to the American Dream as the belief that if you work hard and play by the regulations, so something good will go on to you ( Stein 1 ) . In the movie, Walter Lee Younger does non make either one of these things. Walter doesn T show up for work on a regular basis and he surely has no purposes of playing by the regulations to acquire a concern licences.
Walter Lee is a adult male stuck in a dead terminal occupation that he sees as demeaning and he becomes despairing to liberate himself from the bonds of poorness, subjugation and racial favoritism. Walter Lee feels that with money he can alter the hegemony s position of him as a hapless, stupid, black retainer. The hegemony s societal building of world approximately inkinesss as being lesser and the hegemony s ethnocentric perceptual experience of being superior, is corroborated in an article titled The Colour Bar of Beauty from The Peak. Cristina Rodrigues, a member of the black cultural and societal militant group Olodum, says In Brazil, cipher wants to be black because the mass media equates black with hapless and stupid ( Aujla 2 ) .
Walter has a loving relationship with his household members, but he besides has a relationship that frustrates him. Walter s household defeats are brought on by society s deficiency of socioeconomic advantages for other and Walter s inability to acculturate and accomplish a better life for his household. Unconsciously, Walter s American Dream is to absorb into the mainstream and go a portion of the flush hegemony.
Walter s defeat suppurating sores and his choler turns inward towards his household who, in Walters eyes, do non understand him. Walter s household members do understand him and they besides want to accumulate material dreams, but Walter s household members know that it is traveling to take work to acquire at that place.
Walter begins to imbibe, remain off from place, and to constantly argue with his married woman, Ruth. Walter s life is contrasted by the function of his late widowed female parent, who holds to more traditional values of credence of life s batch and of doing the best of any state of affairs. Walter Lee s Mama holds Walter s male parent up as an illustration of a adult male with pride and a adult male that, despite racial unfairness in a Manichaean society, worked difficult to supply for his household. This adds to Walter s defeat. Walter now feels incapable and little in his mamma s eyes.
Mama s heritage of 10 thousand dollars left by her asleep hubby provides fresh fish for struggle in the household. Each of the household members, visualizing their ain American Dream, has an thought of how the heritage should be spent. All of these thoughts, of class, struggle with Walter s acquire rich speedy strategy. Mama, Ruth, and Travis all have the dream of traveling to their ain place with a white lookout fencing, a garden, a topographic point for Travis to play outside and a bathroom that is non shared by other renters. Walter s sister, Beneatha has a dream of traveling to medical school and being able to assist others. And Walter wants it all! Walter wants the money, the house, a concern, and an overall good life for him and his household. Walter, like many other Americans, measures his dream by income ( Stein 1 ) .
Mama, make up one’s minding that the household needs to recognize the dream of having their ain place, makes a little down payment on a house in the white suburbs. Mama, believing that Walter must go up as the adult male of the household, entrusts him with the balance of the heritage. This act by Mama is contrary to how the hegemony views the Afro-american civilization ; normally, the civilization is recogni
zed as a matriarchal civilization. This position holds true harmonizing to the U.S. Census Bureau on Family Group Statistics. Harmonizing to these statistics, there are more Afro-american females raising kids entirely than any other race in the United States ( U.S. Census Bureau ) .
The ugly face of favoritism rears its caput when Karl Lindner, a representative of the householders association and of the hegemony, offers to buy the Younger s new place. Lindner is doing this offer in order to forestall their vicinity from being integrated and thereby forestall what the white householder s believe would be a decline of their belongings values. During the timeframe of this movie ( mid 1950 s ) this overt and obvious type of racism did be.
Today, with the U.S. Fair Housing Law, Title VIII of the Civil Rights Act of 1968, which enunciates a national policy on just lodging chances for all citizens, the traditional all white hegemonic vicinities have become diverse and rich in many civilizations ( Cornell ) .
Walter, rejecting the values of his female parent s coevals, decides to carry through his lecherousness for instant pecuniary success. By cabaling in a hazardous concern venture and Walter loses the money that the household had so many hopes for!
Desperate and destitute, Walter has dashed the household s dreams of having a place, of Beneatha s opportunity at medical school and the dream of life among the hegemony. Walter s lecherousness for instant wealth and position has taken his household to the threshold, coercing Walter to invent a strategy to pull out a high monetary value from the householders association in exchange for maintaining the Younger s out of the vicinity.
Mama pulling upon her pride and self-respect insists that Walter sign his destiny in forepart of Walter s boy, Travis. At this minute Walter draws deep into his psyche and chooses self-respect for himself and his household and refuses the offer.
Harmonizing to Michael Margolin, a author for the Metro Times, The rubric A Raisin in the Sun comes from a Langston Hughes verse form: What happens to a dream deferred? Does it dry up/ like a raisin in the Sun? / Or does it detonate? ( Margolin 1-3 ) . Walter Lee, the raisin in this movie, replies this by being the raisin that exploded. Without Mama, Walter would hold had what Hughes refers to as a dream deferred.
In analysing this movie subjectively, it seems that Lorraine Hansberry captured the worlds of favoritism. The movie was traveling and induced feelings of shame to be a portion of the hegemony. The hegemony expects the Afro-american to absorb to the white civilization but yet, as President Johnson said in The American Promise, A century has passed, more than a hundred old ages, since equality was promised. And yet the Negro is non equal. ( Johnson 5 ) .
Plants Cited
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Stein, Herbert. The American Dream. The Wall Street Journal. 24 December 1996: 1-2. Online.
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