African American Women’s Quest for American Dream in Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raisin in the sun

Abstract

American dream is neither the dream of particular people nor limited within the particular region. It is beyond the boundary of race, class, gender or religion.It allows any one that has an aspiration, a desire, a yearning, to carry out the individual dream into reality. Only it needs motivation and hard work. Fore fathers of America fought for freedom and equality as American dream. Their dream was to end the racial discrimination and to save their human value. Along with the time, the concept of American dream did not only limit within the dream of life, liberty and pursuit of happiness. It began to give more emphasis on Material prosperityespecially after the Second World War. It also made positive and negative impact on those who used to be marginalized previously and in present too. Africans immigrants were mostly influenced by the so called American dream; African American women were not also untouchable. But they were unable to realize their dream practically due to their race and the attitudes made by whites. Additionally black women were more victimized in comparison tomen; they had to come up with the triple oppression of class, race and gender to realize their dream. It has been selected the play A Raisin in the sun to make study on the American dream of African American women of 1950s. Inthis thesis, it has been portrayed the real condition of immigrant black women, their dreams, their struggle with family and society and their difficulty to attain their dream through the three women characters of the play such as Lena, Beneatha and Ruth