Critical analysis of 2 plays Wilson, Fences and Hansberry, Raisin in the Sun - Essay Example

Black people living in the Northern cities also had to deal with a great deal of racism and lack of opportunity. Not as recognized because it was not codified, the boundaries discovered in the Northern cities were sometimes just as harsh as those experienced in the Southern fields. Several of the limitations or boundaries experienced by black people in the Northern towns might have gone largely unrecognized had it not been for bold playwrights such as Lorraine Hansberry and August Wilson willing to capture, as much as possible, their interpretation of the black experience.

In “A Raisin in the Sun” and “Fences”, both Hansberry and Wilson are able to expose the hidden boundaries their characters encounter as they attempt to achieve a modest version of the American dream. Lorraine Hansberry’s play “A Raisin in the Sun” attempts to portray a relatively typical black family realistically attempting to cope with the boundaries the American society has placed on them. Opening the way for future writers to blatantly name their experience, the play opened on stage in 1959 and received positive reaction from white and black audiences for its bald realism.

The play essentially reveals what happens during the few weeks following the death of the father, Mr. Younger. Mr. Younger (Big Walter) and Mrs. Lena Younger had once hoped of achieving the American Dream as she remarks to Ruth in Act I, scene 1: “We was going to set away, little by little, don’t you know, and buy a little place out in Morgan Park. We had even picked out the house … Lord, child, you should know all the dreams I had ‘bout buying that house and fixing it up and making me a little garden in the back … And didn’t none of it happen” (Hansberry 45).

This conversation occurs because the family is waiting on the delivery of an insurance check in