Drama concepts and critical analysis

Raisin Drama

Walter's Dilemma

The dilemmas facing those who are subjected to society's cruelest of inequities are often the most challenging and morally complex. So is this demonstrated in A Raisin in the Sun, which approaches the struggles of a black family even as it appears to be presented with an opportunity. First performed in 1959, Lorraine Hansberry's play would be a compelling insight rarely offered into the emotional and practical obstructions to happiness for those families faced with internal strife and the external racial discord. In Walter, in particular, the play brings us face-to-face with the difficult decisions that those afflicted thusly must address.

Walter, confronted with a chance to obtain his dream, squanders the family's insurance fortune in a crushing blow to the Younger family that reinforces the difficulty of these decisions. And certainly, from an outsider's perspective, we may find it easy to initially dismiss Walter's behavior as not just foolhardy but outright selfish and despicable. Subsequent, as his failed liquor store deal was, to an agreement with his mother and sister to spread the insurance money amongst them appropriately, we see that Walter acted on impulse and naivete in taking this money for his own purposes. When his would-be partner absconds with the money, we are left with little choice but to condemn Walter. Quite certainly, this is the response with which his mother and sister greet him.

However, if thrust into Walter's position ourselves, we might find cause to defend this action. A more empathetic view on his decision to attempt to follow through on the liquor store deal might cause us to reflect on the nature of individual ambition. In Walter's case, his race, socioeconomic status and personal conflicts such as his drinking tendencies all have conspired against his perceived ability to achieve the dream of financial success and security. Factoring the conditions facing his wife, son and an unborn child that will never see the light of day, Walter is a man who has suffered much and experienced only limited glimpses at happiness.

It is thus that perhaps we can think of his decision as not having been agreeable but, on some level, at least understandable. From his perspective, this may have appeared the only possible route away from the obstacles which he living conditions had laid in his path. Again, this should not be seen as a defense of Walter's decision, which this account cannot agree with. Clearly, his behavior was wrong not just for the reason of its outcome but for the lack of compassion by which he placed his dreams ahead of those of his mother and sister. However, this account should constitute a defense of Walter himself, not for his behavior, but for his disposition and his quality as a man.

As to Walter's decision to use the money as he saw fit, we find a man who's suffering and discontent had blinded him to the real sustenance and value in his family. Truly, for the unhappiness which he had bore, and for the racial abuse shown to the family through such archetypal figures as Mr. Lindner, Walter might have seen himself as fortunate for the presence of all the family members here mentioned. Indeed, his did appear to be a family with a strong moral fiber and a genuine closeness often unseen in the types of contexts which Hansberry depicted.

This is to say that Walter clearly chose poorly. But in the resolution, he comes to take a very active role wherein he reaffirms his appreciation for the importance of this familial strength. Though it would in some regard be true and be left to our own consideration to assess after the play's conclusion that the family might have struggled to forgive Walter, he would nonetheless return to the fray as a key figure of support in resisting Mr. Lindner's overtures.

In the closing scene of the play, Walter makes yet another key decision, and one that seems to reflect a growing awareness both of that which he had devalued and that which he had to be grateful for in his family. Essentially, he factors heavily into the stand which the family takes against Lindner, who attempts to buy the family out of its new home in a white neighborhood. This becomes a moment of considerable importance, even of redemption for Walter, whose prior blindness in the presence of financial opportunity would here be shadowed by an appreciation of the family clearly theretofore overlooked.