A Raisin in the Sun–Zhuoya Li
After reading the play A Raisin in the Sun, I find myself deeply depressed by what happened in it. From the beginning of this play, I can feel the tension hidden in those lines. It talks about a big word : “dream” ; and gives two options of what to do with it. It foreshadows that the characters in this play will have to face the choices it mentioned in the beginning. Whether to dry up like a raisin in the sun or to explode, the characters use their own actions to give the answers, and how they do this is truly encouraging and inspiring.
There are few themes that carry through the whole play, and I want to categorized performances in this play under the name of these themes. One thing that is repeated again and again is money. The setting of this play is that this poor black family lives in a poor “slum” where two floors of people share only one bathroom. Travis wants to have fifty cents to donate, but his mom refuses his pleading even though it means Travis may be the only kid in his class to not give that money. Ruth is very straightforward about not having that fifty cents, and I can see that she suffered a lot from not able to help her own kid. After all, who the mother wants to see her kid be humiliated. Walter Lee as a father seems much more generous that Ruth, giving Travis the money to donate as well as money to take a cab. When he wants to go out later that day, he has to ask his family for money to take a car, and was mocked by his family member. Walter does not want his son to be different from others, so that a little sacrifice of himself is not that important.
Walter is probably feeling this kind of responsibility and powerlessness so many times, that he becomes a man whose mind is occupied by money. He eagerly searches for the opportunity to become rich, and at the same time go through a lot of changes. He becomes selfish of ignoring his sister’s need to go to medical school. He goes against his mom because she forbids him of using the insurance money. All of those displeasure comes from one simple fact : they have no money.
One thing that goes with money hand by hand is dignity. Most of indignity for their family can be explained in three ways : they are poor, they are black, they are bot poor and black. Walter illustrates a lot about why he wants to do something big instead of keeping his job: he is spurned by his clients who see him as nobody; he feels sorry for his wife working way too hard than she should be ; he does not want his son to sleep on sofa every night and bothered by only 50 cents. Another thing is about color. This play exposes how low the status of black people is in America at that time. Teachers publicly calling them “poor niggers” and Ruth does not seem to be upset too much about that. We can conjecture that this kind of bold humiliation is too common for them to be mad at. Walter also uncovers huge differences between black and white by referring to his dream of becoming rich: why does these white boys can sit on the back of his car and talks about deals worth millions of dollars while he has to solicitously ask them which way to go. It is simply not fair and he cannot accept his fate of being in low status his entire life — he has an unwillingness that ultimately leads to his mistake of losing his money.
In the end, Walter abandons his idea of moving out and confront the white man with full dignity. He inherits their family tradition of pride and shows that to his son and family. I am so proud for him displaying tenacity and self-respect in front of the white people who are waiting to insult them with real action. After all of those conflicts and frustration, Walter and his whole family proves that they are really admirable man.