A Matter of Dreams

This is the kind of play that makes you question what the American Dream looks like from different racial and socioeconomic standpoints. It is a play that makes you think about life for African Americans in the 1950s specifically through one family: the Youngers. Living in South side Chicago, struggling to make ends meet and dreaming of better days in a nicer house, this family receives $10,000 from an insurance check following the death of Big Walter, a father, grandfather, and husband to the various characters. This money brings hope for the family: the opportunities that seemed far out of reach before may actually be attainable now. But soon we see that this money is also corruptible. It causes tension, rash decisions, and betrayal that threatens to tear the family apart for good. Set right on the brink of the Civil Rights Movement, this play is culturally charged by characters struggling to find and earn their place within a country tainted with racism. In all, this play was enjoyable in so many ways. As I have already discussed, it makes you think outside of yourself and reexamine the luxuries we may not even realize are luxuries. It is written beautifully; the dialogue is in no way forced, and each character comes to life on the page in their own way. This play also examines the themes of ambition, racism, assimilation, and the power of familial love in the face of oppression and uncertainty. I especially liked the open-ended way that the play concludes. I felt like while it was infused with hope and opportunity, it was realistic in showing its audience how the Youngers' future is uncertain; they will have to work even harder than they have before to be able to make the life for themselves that they want. But, unlike the play's title that alludes to a Langston Hughe poem, there is possibility for the family's dreams to flourish rather than wither like raisins in the sun. 


Some of my favorite lines from A Raisin in the Sun:

"Once upon a time freedom used to be life -- now it's money. I guess the world really do change."

"Then isn't there something wrong in a house -- in a world -- where all dreams, good or bad, must depend on the death of a man?"

"There is always something left to love. And if you ain't learned that, you ain't learned nothing."

"Child, when do you think is the time to love somebody the most? ... Make sure you done taken into account what hills and valleys he come through before he got to wherever he is."

​"Seem like God didn't see fit to give the black man nothing but dreams -but He did give us children to make them dreams seem worth while."

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