“A Raisin in the Sun” by Lorraine Hansberry is about a black family's attempt to find their dreams through to fruition. They are met with discrimination and business conflict throughout the story but they manage to stay unified on their journey to achieve a better life. It all starts with your attitude and how you respond to life. Walter Lee Younger is a middle-aged man who is a little rough around the edges. He works hard and is never seeing the payoff. Walter Lee Younger experiences the most change in the book.
Their dreams, and the hardships needed to achieve them represent the focus of this play. At the beginning of the play Walter and his wife, Ruth, are having an argument about Walter's dream to become the ‘mover and shaker’ in the business world by using some of their family’s insurance check as a downpayment on a liquor business he wants to open. He wants to open this business because he believes this is the way his family can become rich. In the beginning of the book Walter says to Ruth that, “[he’s] trying to talk to [her] ‘bout [himself] and all [she] can say is eat them eggs and go to work”, which is the first sign of Walter's recurring feelings that if someone in the family would just listen to him, they would be much better off (75). Walter is an exhausted, depressed dreamer, who is tired of being a chauffeur. He feels things should be better for him but they aren’t. Walter thinks he is a dependent person needing everyone else around him to help him succeed. He thinks that he needs to be the main support of the family and he needs help to do so. Walter has dreams of using his mother's insurance check of $10,000 as a downpayment for a liquor store. He believes that he is able to buy happiness and thinks money will solve all his problems. This is the only way he thinks he can be successful. The rest of his family specifically his wife and his mother think it is not what they should do with their money. ...