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A Raisin In The Sun Character Analysis Essay

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It is a common experience: a woman dates a man who is rude to everyone except for her. He makes her feel special, but a few months later, he becomes an abusive, controlling boyfriend. Walter Younger from the play “A Raisin In The Sun” by Lorraine Hansberry, while not an abusive person is a milder example of this phenomenon. He is the father in a large African American family, and lives with his mother, sister, wife, and young son. His father has recently died, and his mother, Lena, receives an enormous check from their life insurance. They need this money, as they live in a small house and need to move to a larger one, but Walter wants to invest the money into opening a liquor store instead. Although the play seems to revolve around him, Walter …show more content…

However, a few days after the insurance check arrives, Ruth gets a call from Walter’s employer, who tells her that Walter has not shown up to work, and that he is about to lose his job. When asked about where he has been going instead of working, he retorts ,“I borrowed Willy Harris car and I went for a drive...and I parked the car and I sat and looked at the steel mills all day long...then I drove back and I went to the Green Hat” (II. ii, 545), and describes many other pointless endeavours. The Green Hat is Walter’s favorite bar, and he spends an immense amount of time there. He knows that his family is poor and needs money, but he chooses to not work, and is, in short, taking money from the family. Three days pay is a significant amount of money to lose, especially because Walter spends money to occupy himself in other ways. Due to the amount of time he spends at this bar, it can be assumed that he gets extremely intoxicated, and should not be trusted to make big decisions. Lena ignores this and gives him a large part of the insurance money, which he then loses to a scam. However, he does have a solution: to sell the new house his mother had bought with the rest of the money. He plans to sell it to Mr. Lindner,

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