(blank)

"An end to misery! To stupidity! Don't you see there isn't any real progress, Asagai, there is only one large circle that we march in, around and around, each of us with our little picture in front of us--our own little mirage of what we think is the future."

This is the best book I've read this year, one of the best I've ever read. It did everything I think a great story should and did it exceptionally well, that is deposit the reader at the end more illuminated, stirred with a better understanding.

The play is centered around the Younger family, a Black family living in Chicago post World War II. With the main characters representing three generations: Lena/Mama, the matriarch of the family representing the older generation, Lena's son Walter, his wife Ruth and sister Beneatha representing the new generation and Travis, the grandchild representing the future generation. The title of the play itself is from Langston Hughes' poem Harlem:
What happens to a dream deferred?
Does it dry up
like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore—
And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over—
like a syrupy sweet?

Maybe it just sags
like a heavy load.

Or does it explode?

Told in brilliant storytelling, the dreams of all these characters are presented, weighed, scoffed at, some humbler than others but all generations keeping and trying to maintain a dream that the system they're living under not only refuses to recognize, but actively works to ruin.

I'll be thinking about this story for a while, going through the incredible characterization, all the wonderful scenes and there are several that I will pick up and look at still marveling, and that superb ending. ( )

[11th Grade]

Out of all of the books I had to read this year for school, this one was the least boring. ( )

(Read for school) I think that in the writing it is clear that this Hansberry's first piece of work as the characters felt underdeveloped and the writing felt awkward at times. That being said, this was still a very powerful play and there some great moments in it. ( )

Walter Younger is a man who cannot accept the place society forced on him: as a chauffeur to a wealthy white man, he is constantly thinking about his plan to starting his own business. As _A Raisin in the Sun_ unfolds, you cannot help but think that Walter is a tragic figure, his flaw being his willingness to sacrifice his family's happiness on the altar of his own ambition. Walter's sister, Bennie, is torn between two men - the wealthy George and the Nigerian scholar Asagai. Walter's mother must decide how to spend the insurance money that she receives from her husband's death. The play does not have a typically tragic ending , but you get the sense that the Younger family's struggles are just beginning. ( )