Hopes and Dreams in a Raisin in The Sun

What is it to have hope? We use the term “hope” in our everyday language, no matter, if it is wrong or right, even though the probability of it happening, is slim to none, but it is better to hope than it not happening. Everyone hopes for something out of life, parents are always hoping the best for their children in life. In A Raisin in the Sun everyone has hope or dream they want to accomplish when Mama’s insurance check comes in, Walter’s dreams felt a bit too much to the family. Through Walter, Lorraine Hansberry shows how the money symbolizes hope, to have status and manhood. 

"A Raisin in the Sun": the Fear of Failing the Dream

A Raisin in the Sun opens with the Younger family waiting to receive a ten thousand-dollar check from their late father’s life insurance policy. Each member of the family is thinking of what they want to do with the money. Mama being the glue of the family wants to buy her dream house fulfilling the dream she wished she had the chance to share with her husband, Beneatha Mama’s daughter would like to use the money towards her tuition for medical school, Walter’s wife Ruth agrees with Mama but, she and Walter are hoping to provide more opportunities and space for their only child Travis. While everyone’s dreams seem more possible of happening Walter’s dreams stand out more than others, he hopes to invest in a liquor store for the family he feels that the store would solve all of their problems financially, he hopes to become wealthy and being able to provide for his family giving them the things he never had. As the play enhances you get to see Walter grow into this different person trying to make his family believe in him and that he can be the big man he’s dreaming of. When you read the play, the money is giving a sense of hope for everyone to accomplish their dreams but mainly, Walter, he starts getting this big image of his future where opening the liquor store with his partners would make him the man he wants to achieve in life “You see, this little liquor store we got in mind cost seventy-five thousand…that be ten thousand each” showing how he takes the money into thought and his plans for finally opening the liquor store he’s dreaming of opening (Hansberry 479). When mama finally gives him some of the insurance money he takes his hope of becoming a business owner into action his dreams are too close for him not to take the opportunity he goes and invest sixty-five hundred dollars half of it was for Beneatha’s school tuition, he’s thinking everything is going to fall in place by investing and that he’s finally going to be able to give Travis the world “you wouldn’t understand yet son…business transaction that’s going to change our lives…You just name it, son…and I hand you the world”. Walter is wanting to become his own boss in hopes that the rest of his Father’s insurance money is going to provide that feeling of security that he needs in life. 

Being a black man in that era was nothing but oppression, Mama said that Big Walter uses to say, “Seem like God didn’t see fit to give the black man nothing but dreams”. African American men want status in life they want to be able to live the American Dream just like a White American would. Walter has this ego of being a big man and gaining the lifestyle that he has never experienced as a child and most of his adult life. After telling Ruth what he would plan to do with the money she says to him “Eat your eggs they, gonna be cold” Walter goes off and says, “Man say: I got to change my life, I’m choking to death, baby!” this is symbolizing that he just wants support for his hopes of investing in the liquor store, he’s longing for the support from his wife but Ruth doesn’t see it, she’s oblivious to it. “I’m thirty-five years old; I been married eleven years and I got a boy who sleeps in the living room…all I got to give him is stories about how rich white people live…” he’s made it thus far in life and realized that he has not reached any of his dreams, he feels as if his status in life is low, and he will not gain any if the liquor store investment doesn’t happen. He starts comparing his status with the white men around him saying “Mama – sometimes when I’m downtown and I pass them cool-quiet-looking restaurants where them white boys are sitting and talking ‘bout things…sitting there turning deals worth millions of dollars…sometimes I see guys don’t look much older than me” it is very clear that Walter feels like he’s failed in life and all odds are against him without money, he’s disappointed in himself and what he does in life. Walter is jealous of the businessmen who can afford the highest principle of living, he’s seeing his life shrink as a raisin would in the sun, thinking it is torture because men his age are living up the American Dream only because of the color of their skin. Following through this you’ve seen how Walter is growing hungrier for his dream and status to become real but, he still doesn’t feel like the man he should be in life. When do African American men grow into manhood? Or accomplish manhood? Walter has grown up in Mama’s household with her making the family decisions all the time. While, Walter has been a resentful thirty-five-year-old man only trying to make it in the white man society around him. 

To Become the Person He Dreamed Of

As stated in the recent paragraph he feels as if he’s failed in life tremendously by not accomplishing any of his dream he longed for, he drinks his life away and blames others for his shortcomings in life. When Mr. Linder Clybourne’s Park Improvement Association representative stops by to convince Mama to reconsider moving into their neighborhood for a good price of buying the house that Mama recently bought, Walter wants to accept the offer by looking him in his eyes and saying “All right, Mr. Linder… just write the check and the house is yours” Beneatha responds to him by saying “That is not a man. That is nothing but a toothless rat” because he is taking the check and not backing down, he doesn’t classify as a man, that’s all he wants is to become a big man. He thinks this way he will become one but, he’s just sulking up to the white man for money, when Linder arrives the second time around to see if they accept the offer Walter takes his first big step into manhood when he looks Linder in the eye and says proudly “… We have decided to move into our house because my father — my father — he earned it…” he had a change of heart because he knew he had his son Travis looking up to him, and that would disappoint him. For the first time Walter’s needs did not matter, he thought about the well-being of others and not himself, him standing up to Linder showed Mama and Ruth that he grew into his manhood too. Walter dreams of being a man was not found in the materialism things that he wanted in life such as pearls for Ruth was not the way towards his goal. He achieved the family status as being head of the household proving that he is that big man he dreamed of becoming. 

To answer the question “What is it to have hope?” it is a feeling of trusting your heart, a sense of security, and part of all the reasons to keep pushing in life no matter what tries to bring you down. Not settling for less than what you know, having pride in everything you do, Walter kept all the right reason to push for what he hoped and that was to be a big man and he achieved that status when he didn’t take the money from Linder.

Works Cited

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