Tragic Flaw and Family

Dreams are what give people hope. Dreams are the stuff of imaginings and day dreams. For the Younger family in a Raisin in the Sun, dreams provide each character a motivation and desire. The play shows each member of the Younger family's dream through various instances throughout the text. What starts off a desire or a whim, evolves into a defining moment for each Younger family member. The first of the Younger family to reveal his or her dream is Walter. Walter desperately desires to become wealthy.

As a limousine driver, he barely makes enough to get by and plans on investing on a partnership with Bobo and Willy, that would produce a liquor store. Walter explains the liquor store idea to Ruth demonstrating his zeal to get out of the dilapidates surroundings he lives in. "...this little liquor store we got in mind cost seventy-five thousand and we figured the initial investment on the place be 'bout thirty thousand, see. That be ten thousand each.

Course, there's a couple of hundred you got to pay." (Hansberry 45) Mama is wise enough to spend some of the money on a new home that is part of her dream for the family. While she gives the remainder to Walter, Walter gives it to Willy who spends it and crushes Walter's dream of having a way to get out of his impoverished state.

His desperation for wanting his dream to become a reality is what destroys Beneatha's dream (at least temporarily) and causes some of the drama see in the play. The liquor store is the symbol of Walter's dream and provides both meaning to Walter's character and the means of which to see his tragic flaw. Many people go to the liquor store to drink away their sorrows. There is a desperation in going to a liquor store. Walter's desperation is the key means of which Willy can sucker him into investing.

The liquor store is a motivating and destructive force. Beneatha has the dream of becoming a doctor to which she struggles seeing through due to Walter's misuse of the money Mama gave him. Her dreams are symbolized through her relationship with Asagai. Asagai is one of the men she sees and is the one to help her realize her dependence on her brother's investments and Mama's insurance money to become a doctor.

She realizes that while she may have missed out on an easier way of becoming a doctor, she has the strength herself to see her way through. This is what Mama wanted for her family all along, to have the strength to continue on and persevere. This brings the focus to the last member of the Younger family with a prominent dream, Mama. Mama aims to keep the household clean and polished even if it exists in a poor neighborhood.

She dreams to have her family aim for more strive to be better. That is why she buys a house in a white neighborhood. While they.