Paper Topic:

Comparing A Raisin in The Sun with The House on Mango Street

A Raisin in the Sun takes a few weeks out of the life of the Younger Family . They are an African American family living on the South Side of Chicago in the 1950 's . Both the play and the movie have an appealing everyman quality about it and makes one feel , regardless of their race sympathy for the plight of the family . In A Raisin in the Sun , Walter Lee decides to invest 6500 in a liquor store as his ticket out of his unhappiness . This money is coming by way of the insurance

money that his family will receive from his father 's death . Just like in life , Walter Lee encounters resistance towards the fulfillment of his dreams by way of his mother . The mother , a devout Christian , is dead set against investing the money in such a venture . But Walter Lee is desperate and despises being poor to such an extent that he is not able to think rationally about the proper use of the money . The mother confronts Walter and his blind pursuit of money : So now its life . Money is life Once upon a time freedom used to be life- now its money . I guess the world really do change ' Walter replied : No-it was always about money , Mama . We just didn 't know about it (Hansbery , 1998 ) Its original design of the insurance money was to help get the entire family , Walter Lee , his wife and child , his sister Beneatha and their mother , into a house of their own since they have been renting an apartment for decades

Both Walter Lee and Esperanza are similar in some ways . They are both minorities and feel that they are victims of racism . Both live on the Southside of Chicago and are unsatisfied with their current standard of living as well as the level of respect that they and others like them receive from their peers . Walter Lee is angry at the impediment that his race serves him and the realization that his dreams may never come to fruition . Esperanza in this way , is unlike Walter Lee but is similar to Beneatha Walter Lee 's race conscious sister . Both are proud of their heritage and see others of their own race as selling out ' and attempting to ignore the situations around them . These ideas are indirectly strengthened through one of Beneatha 's suitors , the affluent George Murchison . He is well educated and successful but it seems that this came about out of no skill of his own but rather out of the efforts of his father . He sees Beneatha as somebody not to be taken seriously but the more she sees of him , the more she wishes to be unlike him and no longer takes him seriously as well . She has these crazy ideas , in his mind , about going back to Africa in to get connected to her roots and to help find her identity . George does not take this seriously not the pain that Beneatha feels...

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