Raisin In The Sun American Dream Essay

Words: 851
Pages: 4

“Raisin in the Sun” is a play about the struggles of a poor black family in a low end housing complex trying to get out. One of the first things one realizes about the play is how everyone has their own dreams, which are established within the very first act. These dreams all vary, but what they all have in common is getting away from their lives at the current state and they are all connected by the check coming in from their deceased father’s life insurance. These dreams reflect the title’s reference to the play “Harlem” that contains the title of the play about dreams. In the play, it talks about what happens when dreams are “deferred” and questions what happens when they are. The poem is basically asking if you give up or if you keep trying …show more content…
But one thing that can be seen is, that they all want it for themselves to make their own specific dreams come true. Later in the play, when the check does arrive, we find that the two mothers have their dreams seemingly set because a down payment was made into a house and they plan on moving in. Next we learn that the rest of the money was lost by the alcoholic father and so Beneatha and Walter both loses their dreams. This is where the incongruity of the play’s message in respect to the poem “Harlem”s theme is started. We see how both of them have had their dreams crushed, but they neither rotted nor exploded and it seemed like nothing really occurred at all with it. We don’t know if they gave up or not. Or if they exploded or not which is a bad representation of the title’s poem reference. This is again seen as we continue on in the play when we see the final conflict and the representation of dreams. We start to hear the neighborhood that they are try-ing to move into does not want them and they are willing to pay them a lot of money to stay away. This is when the theme of Harlem and pretty much the congruity of the entire play is neglected be-cause they eventually decide to turn down the money and move into the house. This neglects the mother’s idea of wanting a