“A Raisin in the Sun”
Has there ever been a time when you actually stopped to think about what life actually has to offer? Day to day we live taking on life’s endeavors and in some ways never really getting anywhere. Sometimes we need an extra push or shove to get somewhere in life, so we don’t end up in the same place we came from. Walter feels that the chance to buy the liquor store will help get him and his family out of the familiar and all too common place that they know.
Walter earns a living as a chauffeur, driving around rich white people “opening car doors all day long saying, yes sir, no sir, very good sir, shall I take the drive sir?” (Hansberry Pg 1037) and adhering to their needs. He has high hopes and aspirations for the good of his family, and having a piece of the American dream. Owning something of his own would allow him support his family on his own terms, and not have to answer to the rich white man to whom they have been waiting on for so many years. With five generations of his family living in this country and both his Mama and wife working in their kitchens and his late father who worked as a day laborer, Walter feels that it’s time to work for himself and have his family benefit from it.
Living at a time when there was still a great deal of segregation and rejection that the African American people had to endure, Walter feels that if he owned a business of his own he wouldn’t have to deal with the rejection and doors of opportunity being slammed in his face. There isn’t much for Walter Lee to look forward to; he lives in a small three room apartment with four other people one of whom is his own son that has to sleep on the couch because there isn’t enough room for him to have a space of his own. There’s a bathroom across the hall that they all have to share with the rest of the tenants on the floor, rushing across the hall in their robes just to get in before the person who lives next door. Where is the dignity in that? As the man of...