Everybody has dreams. As a child, people may have had the dream of being a rock star or superhero. In middle school, people could’ve dreamed of being a doctor. Then when they reach high school, they have dreams that must be realistic. They must make decisions about their future, and sometimes their judgement is clouded by unrealistic desires. Dreams are wonderful and terrible things all in one. Some people have dreams of spending all their time helping others, and making the world a better place. While other people dream of horrible things that could ruin their lives and others.
So today when we ook at these three different pieces we will analyze the different types of dreams and the way they affected people. In the play A Raisin in the Sun by Lorraine Hansberry there are three characters that all had different dreams. We have mama who had the dream of getting a real home for her family. Then there is Beneatha who had the dream of being a doctor. Finally we have Walter who had the dream of opening a liquor store. Mama and Beneatha’s dreams were very realistic, and they were something that people should aspire for. Walter’s dream though was made up from the affects of alcohol.
Walter’s udgement was clouded by the depressant, and he couldn’t have a dream that was good for him. Mama’s dream was positive, and she was thinking about her family and their future. Beneatha’s dream was positive for her. As a black woman in the 1950’s dreaming of becoming a doctor was something extremely uncommon, but very admirable. When looking for quotations about their dreams, readers may pick out this quotation from mama about Walter’s dream, “I’m sorry ’bout your liquor store, son. It just wasn’t the thing for us to do” (Hanberry 53).
In that quotation readers can see that Walter’s dream was not beneficial for the family. Moving on to mama’s dream, the person she wanted it to help the most was Travis. She wanted Travis to have a home to live in with his family one day, so she was going to get him a home. A quotation readers may pick relating to this is, “She went out and she bought you a house! You glad about the house? It’s going to be yours when you get to be a man” (Hansberry 70). The final quotation readers may look for is about Beneatha’s dream. Walter thought Beneatha’s dream was stupid because women became nurses, not doctors.
Beneatha was very persistent though, and she insisted that she would be a doctor. Readers ight pick out this quotation for Beneatha’s dream, “Who the hell told you you had to be a doctor? If you so crazy ’bout messing ’round with sick people-then go be a nurse like other women-or just get married and be quiet” (Hansberry 20). In all of these quotations readers can see that the dreams each character had influenced the family in many ways, and most of the effects were not positive. The next piece we will be looking at is the poem by Langston Hughes called “Dreams. Lorraine Hansberry was inspired by one of his poems, and that is where she got the title of her play. Langston Hughes was a very important man in American istory. He was a social activist, and he worked for equality for the African American community. Just like Martin Luther King Jr. he had a dream that the African American community would have the same rights, and would be treated as equals with the white community. The white community at that point in time was seen as superior to the blacks, and too this day we still have this problem in situations such as police brutality.
In the poem by Langston Hughes there is a quotation that says, “For if dreams die life is a broken-winged bird that cannot fly” (Hughes 126). In that quotation readers can see that Langston Hughes elieves that without dreams society is broken, and cannot continue to move and prosper. Another quotation readers may have picked was, “For when dreams go life is a barren field frozen with snow” (Hughes 126). In this quotation it is obvious that he is trying to say that dreams are what make life exciting and full of life.
Without dreams people’s lives are empty and incomplete because they have nothing to aspire too. The final piece we will analyze is a magazine article written by Suzanne Seixas, and it is called “Running from Racists. ” In this article it talks about the story of the Longs, and how they were an out of their home by the skinheads all because they supported MLK. They and many other African American families has a dream that one day they would be treated as equals, and that they would be given the same opportunities as the white community.
They had to move out of their home and into a new one. That put them in financial ruins, and it was hard for them to make ends meet. Their monthly mortgage went up 34% when they moved, and they didn’t really have the money to pay for it. They were treated so poorly all because they have the dream that one day they will be free of the confinements of being an African American. They hope that one day they will be able to attend the same public schools, go to the same restaurants, and be able to sit where they want on the bus, just like the white community.
A quotation that was prominent to their mistreatment because of their dream said, “Breathlessly, Ray Jr. explained that the gang had ambushed them after he challenged one of the “skins” for making fun of a planned rally marking the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. ‘s birthday” (Seixas 185) Within that quotation readers can conclude that white Americans were horrible towards African Americans, and they degraded them for everything. The final quotation picked from this article said, “As more blacks moved into Deer Valley, though, racial tensions surfaced at Barry Goldwater High.
At least two students proclaimed themselves skinheads” (Seixas 188). This final quotation shows that the increase of the African American population in the high school made the white society mad. They started being even more cruel to them, and they didn’t treat them as equals in anyway. When reading all three of these works people can see that dreams affect society in many ways. They can tear apart families, lives may seem empty without them, and they can mpact lives in ways that nobody should ever have to go through.
The racism in the world then is something that people in America will never forget. The racial tension now is only a repeat of history. Many people say that if you do not learn from the past history will just keep repeating itself. That is what’s happening. African Americans just want to be treated as equals to their white counterparts. They do not expect to be put on a pedestal like some white Americans do. They just have a dream, and African Americans will hold on to that dream forever until it becomes a reality.
