In the book A Raisin in the Sun by Lorraine Hansberry, there were characters whose dreams were stated, some of which were shattered by greed and misfortune and others which would eventually come to be true. The first dream that came about was Walters dream of one day owning and maintaining a liquor store. He would do anything to attempt to get his dream to come true, but his mama wanted anything but that to happen. His mama had a dream of her own though, she dreamed of one day owning her own house, where her whole family could stay comfortably.
She dreamed this because in the apartment that she resided in was too small, and dumpy, as Ruth called it. Her grandson Travis had to sleep on the couch, and all that she wanted was for him to have a bed of his own. Neither of these dreams could come true to them because of the wealth of the characters. They could barely support themselves, let alone buy all of this new stuff. Suddenly, things changed, and Walter and his family came into quite a bit of money. Walters mama got a check for ten thousand dollars from her husbands life insurance after he passed away, which was a lot of money in that period of time.
A nice house or a liquor store could easily be bought with half of the money from the check. Since the check was actually written out to mama, the money was all technically hers, so all that she wanted to do with it was buy her new house for her family, but stubborn Walter, he wanted his liquor store, and would stop at nothing to get it. When he finally realized that his mama was never going to give him the money to get the liquor store, he took it upon himself to get it himself.
He eventually stole a portion of his mamas money to get the store, but he was taken for a fool when the other person that he was making a deal with, stole all of his money. Now he had nothing, and mama had only some of her money. He finally realized that he had been wrong all along, and that he should have done what was best for his family before he tried to benefit from the money for himself. This part of a poem by Langston Hughes best describes his dreams: What happens to a dream deferred? Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun(Hansberry ).
That is exactly what happened to Walters dream, it just sat there and dried up like a raisin in the sun because he did nothing about it until he could, and by that time, it was already too late. Luckily, his misfortune had not led to a total disaster, and there was enough money to fix the things that he had messed up in the past. His mother eventually got her dream to come true by using the left over money to buy a house. This title of the book, A Raisin in the Sun, describes the book in a very effective way.
