How Hansberry Illuminates Hughes Essays Examples

The conflicts found in the art of the Harlem Renaissance are not a conflict of white between black, instead it is a conflict within the African American as they try to make sense of their place in the world and society. Laura Barrette speaks in her of a concept originally introduced by W.E.B. DuBois’s theory of a “double-consciousness” within African American texts. In her essay, “’Mark my words’: Speech, Writing and Identity in Three Harlem Renaissance Stories” she writes of this double consciousness, saying, “African American texts are “mulattoes,” struggling between two parallel discursive universes” (Barrette, 1). This idea of double consciousness can be found within Langston Hughes poem “A Dream Deferred” and the Lorraine Hansberry play which quotes it, A Raisin In the Sun. Hughes short poem is further illustrated by the play, both of which have a central conflict of coming to terms with a duality in their understandings.
A Raisin in the son follows the life of an African American family living in a racially tense time period of Chicago in the 1950s, when the Civil Rights Movement was just starting to take hold. The plot is that while they are poor, they will be soon receiving some money that come from their fathers, who has died and has insurance.
In Hughes poem, the discussion is about what happens to a person when their “dream” is deferred. Hughes begins his poem by asking the question, “What happens to a dream deferred?” He follows with another question, “Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun?” (Hughes, n.p.). Unspoken in the poem, but expounded upon in the play is that this difference is due to their race. So in a sense, this money in the play is an example of dreams that no longer need to be deferred due to the insurance money that the family will collect. Hansberry uses each family members vision of what they will do with the money to make a larger statement about the general situation of this family within their society in Chicago. In this way, the play illuminates the poem by asking the question, “What happens when a dream no longer needs to be deferred?” Each family member of the Young family has a different idea of what should happen.
One character in the play, Walter, is overcome with possibility at the thought of what he could do with the money. He says, I got to change my life I’m choking to death, baby!” (Hansberry, 495). But the lesson that is learned in the play, is that while at the beginning all of the characters believe their problem was money, their conflicts with the culture at large and their plight within it ran deeper than that. It is a conflict between a distinctive African American culture and fitting in with a culture at large. At one point the culture at large enslaved people because of the color of their skin. But while slavery has ended, what has not ended is the separation between white culture and black culture. Hughes asks what happens when a dream is deferred. Hansberry illuminates this question in her play. What the characters discover was that their “American dream” was more about discovering their values, rather than adopting the American value that money can buy happiness.
Works Cited: Barrett, Laura. "“Mark My Words”: Speech, Writing, and Identity in Three Harlem Renaissance Stories." Journal of Modern Literature: 58-76. Print.
Hansberry, Lorraine. "A Raisin In The Sun." Web. 30 Nov. 2014. <http://www.myteacherpages.com/webpages/tpa
Hughes, Langston. "Harlem." Poetry Foundation. Poetry Foundation. Web. 30 Nov. 2014. <http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/175884