A Raisin In The Sunamerican Dream Essay Example

that they are victims of racism. Both live on the Southside of Chicago and are unsatisfied with their current standard of living as well as the level of respect that they and others like them receive from their peers.

Walter Lee is angry at the impediment that his race serves him and the realization that his dreams may never come to fruition. Esperanza in this way, is unlike Walter Lee but is similar to Beneatha; Walter Lee’s race conscious sister. Both are proud of their heritage and see others of their own race as “selling out” and attempting to ignore the situations around them. These ideas are indirectly strengthened through one of Beneatha’s suitors, the affluent George Murchison. He is well educated and successful but it seems that this came about out of no skill of his own but rather out of the efforts of his father.

He sees Beneatha as somebody not to be taken seriously but the more she sees of him, the more she wishes to be unlike him and no longer takes him seriously as well. She has these crazy ideas, in his mind, about going back to Africa in order to get connected to her roots and to help find her identity. George does not take this seriously not the pain that Beneatha feels about trying to find who she really is. Esperanza has become aware of this and decided at an early age not to be dominated by men but rather to make her own way in life based upon her own merits.

Cisneros, in the book The House on Mango Street, tells us the life of Rafael, whose husband locks her

indoors because he is afraid that she will leave him, She has traded her freedom for a husband and listens to the music from the bar down the street within her own house and it is the only form of entertainment that she received from the outside world. Cisneros says that Rafael is “getting old from leaning out the window. ”(Cisneros, 1998) She is wasting her valuable years as a young women, only to be locked up like a criminal and not treated like a precious individual.

It is the same for Beneatha. By George dismissing the concerns of Beneatha, he is also dismissing her and sees her as just a confused and silly young girl instead of the woman that she is and that she is trying to portray to the outside world. By not taking her seriously and dismissing her feelings, he is in fact, dismissing her entire self because of the fact that Beneatha, throughout the entire play, identifies herself so closely with her race, her gender and what she knows she can be if given the opportunity.

In A Raisin in the Sun, the males, Walter Lee and his young son, are not the dominant figures, nor do they strive to be unlike Esperanza in A House on Mango Street. Walter Lee is the main figure in the play but shuns his responsibility as the man of the house and to lead the family into this new chapter in their lives. It is his mother that is the head of the house and who seems to take a greater interest in the lives of Walter Lee’s wife and son.

This is due to the

fact that Walter Lee is too busy being discouraged about his circumstances and trying to think up new and counterproductive ways in which to get rich and be happy. Esperanza admires and embraces strength in a way in which Walter shuns it. She is unsatisfied with her life and the ways in which she sees other Latino women mistreated and disrespected and knows that is not the life that she wants. But she is different in the fact that she is portrayed as having the necessary tools to become successful in her endeavor.

A Raisin in the Sun ends without Beneatha making a decision between either George, one who has gained his success by assimilating with the white world and Asagai who is an obvious contrast and who wants Beneatha to go back to Africa with him. Both Beneatha and Esperanza want to give back and encourage others of their race and gender to have the fortitude and self respect to achieve their dreams. It is the strength of her grandmother that is a source for Esperanza’s strength. She commented that her grandmother: “was a wild horse of a woman. (Cisneros, 1998)

It is this type of strength that Esperanza wishes to copy in her own life while at the same time, not marrying out of security or pressure as that same grandmother consented to do herself. In this way, Esperanza builds on the strengths of her family and experiences in the same way she learns to avoid their mistakes. Both Esperanza and Walter Lee as well as Beneatha rely upon their talents of escapism in order to offset the problems that occur living a poor existence

on the south side of Chicago.

Walter Lee escapes by daydreaming of a new life for his family even though many times, he sees that as an impediment towards the fulfillment of his dreams. Walter speaking to his son about his dream of getting rich: “You wouldn’t understand yet, son, but your daddy’s gonna make a transaction... A business transaction that’s going to change our lives... That’s how come one day when you ’bout seventeen years old I’ll come home I’ll pull that car up on the driveway... We’ll go to your room to see you sitting on the floor with the catalogues of all the great schools in America around you.... Whatever you want to be-Yessir! You just name it son, and I hand you the world! ” (Hansberry, 1999).

Even though Walter Lee sometimes sees his family as that inescapable impediment, in the end, his motivations are for his family as much as himself, although the means in obtaining that life seem misguided. Esperanza is not interested in escapism but rather wishes to deal with the hard facts of life and to combat them head on. She sees her friend Sally’s use sex as a way to escape her own discontent regarding her abusive father.

Esperanza is not comfortable with Sally’s level or frequency of her sexual maturity but also does not want to use such destructive force in order to escape reality. Esperanza uses more constructive forms of escapism like her writing as well as making detailed and realistic plans to help other Chicano women escape their oppressive lives. Esperanza does have thoughts of grandeur as she plans to leave Mango Street but always manages to

come back. She does not come back because she is under some control of a man or her own painful past but it is the thoughts and personal feelings to help other women that makes her coming back to Mango Street.

In that way, her form of escapism is more positive that that of Walter Lee’s and Beneatha’s at least at the time of the play. However, at the very end of the play, Walter Lee catches up the maturity level of the rest of his family as well as Esperanza’s. Once it has been discovered that Walter’s family is planning on moving to their new neighborhood, Mr. Linder, a member of the Improvement Association for Clybourne Park, to dissuade the family from moving in and changing the demographics of the town.

Esperanza too finds solace in her situation as she tries to help herself by trying to help by supporting women and helping to liberate them from the men who pursue them for their own unselfish reasons. She was very aware of her surroundings and the impediments that relationships with men served her. She decided at a much younger age than Walter Lee, that deferring one’s own selfish desires for a greater good is a plentiful source of happiness. For Esperanza, this came through her writing and helping others avoid the fate that her friends and family as well as herself for a time, endured; the loss of their freedom and self identity.