Lena, Walter, Ruth, and Beneatha Younger all lived under the same roof, but their dreams were all different. Being the head of the household, Lena dreamed the dreams of her children and would do whatever it took to make those dreams come true. Walter, Lena's oldest son, set his dream on the liquor store that he planned to invest with the money of his mother. Beneatha, in the other hand, wanted to become a doctor when she got out of college and Ruth, Walter's wife, wanted to be wealthy. "A Raisin in the Sun" was a book about "dreams deferred", and in this book that Lorraine Hansberry had fluently described the dreams of the Younger family and how those dreams became "dreams deferred."
Lena Younger, Walter and Beneatha's mother, was a widow in her early sixties who devoted her life to her children after her husband's death. Retired from working for the Holiday's family, she was waiting for her husband's insurance money to arrive. With the ten thousand dollars check in her hand, Lena decided to buy a three thousand dollars house in Clybourne Park and she was also going to put some of the money in the bank for Beneatha's medical school. Those were her dreams; they were so simple and ordinary but also were beautiful. She expected everybody to be delighted and surprised at the things she had done with the check and indeed, they did, except for Walter.
Walter was upset when he heard his mother had spent the insurance money on the house and thought it wasn't fair that Beneatha got some of it for her medical school while he got nothing for his liquor store business. Lena, who always wanted her son to be happy, trustingly gave the rest of the insurance money to Walter. Holding the money in his hands, Walter thanked his mother and appreciated the trust she had in him. Walter then gave the money to his buddies to help him getting his liquor license without realizing that they betrayed him. As his dream crumbled to pieces, Walter was regret...