Best

Issa Best

Professor Caldwell

Play Reading

25 March 2014

Dreams from a Deferred Man

In 1959 when Lorraine Hansberry set out to write the soon to be classic A

Raisin in The Sun, African Americans were in the trenches of the Civil Rights

Movement with racial injustice looming over where ever they went. So rather than

portraying the typical racist struggles of the time, Hansberry takes a different

approach and writes about how outside ideals of race and masculinity effect one

African American family as they re-evaluate their life and move into a white

neighborhood. It is obvious that throughout African American heritage, the woman

typically rule, however on top of dealing with ideals of black worth, Hansberry uses

this time to reflect on the role of the man in the black household, while living in

white America.

Events are set into motion while Lena Younger, the matriarch of the family, is

waiting for her deceased husband’s insurance check. Before the money even arrives,

everyone in the family already has their own desires and aspirations for the funds,

especially Walter Lee. As the man of the household, Walter particularly feels an

entitlement to his late father’s insurance check. Bogged down by women constantly

telling him what he cannot pursue, Walter Lee has no choice but to assert himself as

a man, take matters into his own hands, disobey everyone’s wishes and inevitable

gamble away the inheritance.

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Though contrasting in almost every way, Asagai and George are similar in the

sense they present a different type of African American man than Walter Lee. Walter

has unfortunately grew up in a society where he has never been able to achieve his

dreams, where as both Asagai and George have made it to college and have become

educated black men for their time. Where all Walter can see are his dreams of the

life he’ll never have, resentment for the life he lived, and the failed choices he made,

Asagai and George can see how to better the next generation. While one plans on

doing it through education, and the other by simply changing the society around

him, they both tangibly understand that change doesn’t come from one magic check,

but rather from years of hard work. As Asagai so frankly point’s out to Beneatha

who also dreams of getting her hands on the money, “Did you earn it? Would you

have had it at all if your father had not died” (Hansberry 565)?

Much like Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman, written only a decade earlier,

Hansberry tackles the issue of men and how fruitlessly they set out to achieve their

desires and dreams, the only difference being that Walter Lee as a black man has

already gone through so much turmoil and disappointment in his life, that these

10,000 dollars can truly be a turning point and what he believes change not just his

life, but the lives for his future generations to come, and finally step up to the plate

and be the man of the household.

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