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Raisin' Some Money



In our humanities class called Drama we entered a unit titled: Matriarch. This unit we read continued our streak of reading famous plays that had a massive impact. This unit we asked the question of what is a matriarch? As we made guesses of our own as to what this word could really mean we began to read a book that we could use to put the word into context. The book we read is called ‘A Raisin in the sun’ by Lorraine Hansberry. ‘A Raisin in the Sun’ is a play about a black family living through a segregated Chicago sometime in the late 1950s. They struggle through much as a family and even more through the way they were treated racially. The book hints at many issues of the time including: societal gender norms, blockbusting in black neighborhoods and Uncle Tom’s’

    While reading this book we also attended workshops at the Goodman Theatre right down the street from GCE. We came here to learn from people whose job it is to understand, interpret and consider these contemporary plays of the time. We also got lessons in acting, identifying plot points and understanding black matriarchal stereotypes. Doing this helped us to better understand the social nuances of the play.

    While reading ‘A Raisin in the sun’ I learned a great many things but throughout it I kept finding myself relating to the father of the family the book follows called Walter. Walter would end up making a grave mistake and no matter how flawed he was I can always identify with his humanity and the human way he makes mistakes. I wanted to get to the core of his dysfunction and his deepest motives and dissect why he did what he did because he seems like an wholesome and good man who loves his family. I believe the point where he went wrong was when he got put under pressure to provide for the family as a man of the house. Being in a house full of strong and self-sufficient matriarchs who looked down on him couldn’t have helped. Found below is a slide show of my further dissection of Walter as a character. I learned lots from this character and I hope my findings might be able to help you understand the humanity of this character as well through the means of a classic Greek Chorus to speak praise and yet highlight and teach a lesson from his shortcomings.




    In conclusion, I hope I got you to see Walter in a better light because of what I've presented to you.  One thing that i would like to point ou was that I had a lot of trouble with the formatting of this project.  I went to great lengths to properly format everything in a way that makes sense in terms of what makes a Greek Chorus.  I can't really find anything I would do differently. I feel like I really got my point across and that my project help to inform the reader of a view point they might not have seen.  From this I learned a knew less formal but equally informative way to write something to persuade someone into seeing things your way.  Thank you for reading!
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