A Raisin in the Sun
Lorraine Hansberry (1959)
“A Black family in 1950s Chicago fights over a $10,000 insurance check — and every argument is really about whether Black Americans are allowed to dream.”
Character Analysis
Walter Lee is the play's most demanding role because Hansberry requires the audience to love a man who is, for most of the play, failing his family. His ambition is real. His desperation is understandable. His inability to see Ruth's or Beneatha's needs until it is almost too late is a consequence of the same system that has narrowed his vision to the one dream he can conceive of. His redemption in the final scene is not an erasure of his failures — it is a man discovering, at the last moment, what he actually values.
Rhythmic, repetitive declarations when impassioned; flat and short when defeated. Uses 'man' as an address. References his job (chauffeur) with barely contained rage. Speech accelerates under excitement.