Lorraine Hansberry's sparkling career as an author was
cut short by her death when she was only 35. It was the
first play ever written by a black woman. The play is
about five African Americans who live in a filthy house.
“A Raisin in the Sun" by Lorraine Vivian Hansberry
conveys the timeless struggle for the furtherance of
family values and morals with utmost clarity. The play
follows the life of a small black family's difficult
struggle to keep their dreams of from tenants to owners
alive and see them through to fruition. These dreams,
and the struggles necessary to attain them, as well as
coming to terms with the dreams that are out of reach,
are the focus and driving force behind this story of
every persons struggle to attain goals that aren't
always in tune with societies thoughts or ideas on a
persons place in life. The internal difficulties of the
family and the detrimental effects of these problems on
the family is a major theme in the play.”
(Tim Decker)
‘A Raisin in the Sun’ is very much committed to the
struggle for equality and human rights of the black
population. ‘A Raisin in the Sun’ was the first play
created by a black woman to be produced on Broadway.
Hansberry's ‘A raisin in the sun’ depicts the life of a
Negro family. The characters bear huge barriers
fabricated by the authoritative culture. Their dreams
and hopes remained tarnished from every point of view.
The protagonist depicts the inner as well as the outer
truths encountered by Afro-American families in Chicago.
The play has power, energy as well as truthfulness about
the real brutalities black population of Chicago faced
at that time.
In ‘A Raisin in the Sun,’ we witness a Black family
trying to stand up for its rights to move into an all
White neighborhood. On the contrary black families
living in White neighborhoods had their houses burned by
their White neighbors. Walter Lee Younger, a young chap
forge ahead to advance in American society. In south
side of Chicago, Walter Lee, a black chauffeur,
fantasized of a more prosperous and better life. He
needed his father's life insurance money to open a
liquor store. His mother instantly dismissed this idea
of opening a liquor store. Instead she wanted to utilize
the same money in buying out a more proper house for the
family. The mother gives the money to her son the money
to preserve in a bank, but her son acts otherwise. He
thought it would be a good idea to take the money and
invest in some liquor company. Instead of going to the
bank, he gave the money to a stranger who took the money
and ran off.
The major theme of the play is the significance of
dreams, as every one of us is driven by them. Closely
allied to the dream theme is that of pride. Even though
the family is poor, they are all proud of their values
and morals. Walter believes he can be successful
businessman. Discrimination for blacks was not able to
weaken the family ties. Because of the affinity in the
family, they stuck together, even in hard times, to make
their dreams come true. They prove that family ties are
more important than money. The issue of pursuing the
American Dream runs through ‘A Raisin in the Sun.’ The
characters wanted what the American Dream assured;
education, a good job, a nice house in a nice
neighborhood, and above all civil rights.
“The Younger family’s situation gave them a reason to
fight for their dreams and overcome the obstacles set
before them. By leaving the apartment and moving into
the house, not only were they surmounting an economical
situation, but also the racial barriers. Conclusively,
especially through Lena, and also through Walter and
Ruth, the play shows that dreams have to be held on to
with relentless ambition and determination, so that
success can be achieved.” (Conclusion) Caryl Churchill
is captivated with exposing her plays as stage worthy
contrast from movie scripts. Her bold ideas are stamped
with creativity and postmarked with success. This has
given Churchill an invincible spot among her
contemporaries.
The play, "Heart's Desire," is an essay in construction
and a philosophical musing on chance. It has a
stop-return-start mechanism suggesting the endlessly
fraught possibilities of a suburban family awaiting the
return of a daughter from Australia. Heart's Desire is
about a father and daughter. In ‘Heart's Desire’ a
father, mother and aunt expect the arrival of a woman
from Australia, where she has been living for many
years. Heart's Desire is based on repetitions,
which agree well with the concept that gender is always
incessant, and that we learn our gender role by
simulating and repeating conventional manner of gender
behavior. If we accept this concept, Heart's Desire may
be considered as a standard of the theory i.e. people
keep rehearsing particular actions, and this way
discovers their gender position. Heart's Desire run with
apparently useful sentences, which are grasped by the
characters themselves, however, the way they use
language hints at another reality which underlies the
plot.
“The first play, Heart's Desire, takes place in a
contemporary kitchen where a family is waiting for the
daughter to come home. Written as a theatrical
experiment, the scenes continually repeat themselves as
the characters go back in time, pick up the action, and
go off on different tangents. "This is meant to
challenge the audience's view of what theatre is, and
what we expect from the stage," says Town. “You have to
stop and think about what you are seeing and hearing. As
the action repeats, the lighting keeps repeating as
well. "There are 100 cues in a half-hour play," says
Town. They are all based on the four basic cues we felt
were needed for the final scenario. They keep jumping
back in time, so the lighting jumps back as well." Her
challenge was to be able to jump back to exactly the
right cue for any given moment in the play. "I broke my
script into colors, and had a green cue and a blue cue,
for example.” (Ellen Lampert-Greaux and David Barbour,
1999)
In the ‘Heart’s Desire’, an off-stage bell controls the
parents and aunt, as they prepare lunch and wait for
their daughter. A rhythm is set up as the scene is
played and replayed with keen and gentle incredible
variations, always fastened by the bell. Different
dramatic possibilities are delved in a creaky marriage.
The middle-aged couple is far away, nagging, tender, one
of them has been having an affair for ten years, and
both get to leave the other. Unlike Hansberry's play
where comfortable resolutions are reached, the
resolution of ‘Heart’s Desire’ is much more
antagonistic. Both writers develop critical
conversations on a varying feminist agenda, class
agenda, or social agenda. These questions will require
attention to the historical and political communities
both writers were absorbed in, to bring forth honest
interpretations.
Decker, Tim, “The propagation of pride and dignity”
http://www.cwrl.utexas.edu/~daniel/anderson/amlit/raisin/td/pride.html
Conclusion, A raisin in the sun – theme http://www.wowessays.com/dbase/ac2/krc137.shtml
The Best of Britain, Ellen Lampert-Greaux and David
Barbour, Lighting Dimensions, Mar 1, 1999 http://lightingdimensions.com/ar/lighting_best_britain/
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