Raisin in the Sun: Walter Lee\'s Dream

¶ … Raisin in the Sun: Walter Lee's Dream Deferred

Lorraine Hansberry's A Raisin in the Sun chronicles the struggles of the African-American Younger family to gain a foothold in American middle-class society. One of the most poignant characters is the elder brother, Walter Lee, who works as a chauffeur but dreams of owning his own liquor store. Although racism has clearly limited Walter's dreams of social mobility, Hansberry also makes it clear that Walter's psychology has also been a source of his frustrations and limitations. Walter is constantly looking for a 'get rich quick' scheme, which results in him losing part of the inheritance his father worked so hard to obtain. Instead of investing in his education like his sister Beneatha, Walter invests in a liquor store instead: he claims he is a 'giant surrounded by ants,' but the actual scope of his ambitions is actually very small.

The beginning of the play depicts Walter's anger at the women in his life, whom he feels are preventing him from realizing his true potential. His mother has decided not to let him use the insurance money she inherited after the death of her husband to open a liquor store. His wife Ruth merely tells him to eat his eggs in the morning and does not take his side in family conflicts. Walter cries "see, I'm trying to talk to you about myself…and all you can say is eat them eggs and go to work" (Hansberry 495). And perhaps most galling of all, his sister, although being an African-American like himself is studying to be a doctor, seemingly tapping into the social mobility to which Walter feels he lacks access. Walter feels closed off from rising above his current position.

Walter lashes out at Beneatha, both subtly and overtly both for 'acting white' in terms of her interests and academic aspirations and also for what he sees as the silliness of her Afro-centric interests. Over the course of the play, Beneatha dates George Murchison, a wealthy African-American and Joseph Asagai, an African exchange student. These two forces of conventional success and African dreams are tearing her apart, but it is clear to Walter that Beneatha is fighting to build a future beyond the confining walls of the small apartment in which all of them live. For this, he mocks her with obvious jealousy. However, the clearest indication of his anger at Beneatha is when he uses the insurance money partly intended for her education to invest in his liquor store. This is foreshadowed when he says, sarcastically in the first scene: "if Mama got that money she can always take a couple of thousand and help you through school -- can't she" (Hansberry 497). Subliminally, Walter seems intent upon killing Beneatha's dreams if he cannot realize his own, indicating the psychological as well as social limitations upon Walter's advancement: his theft of the liquor store money ultimately damages Beneatha's aspirations more than his own, more than anyone else's in the play.