Failure of American Dream in Afro-American Context in Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun

Abstract

Hansberry presents a story of a black family in a Chicago ghetto in which a group of black characters are shown with their dreams. As the play begins with the poem “What happens to a dream deferred”, borrowed from Langston Hughes, suggests that there must be massive social explosion when the characters find that their dreams proved to be failure. But Hansberry has artistically tackled the situation to make people aware that dreams are not always fulfilled. So, at the end of the play, there is a note of hope for a new life. Hansberry wants to show social and racial discriminations and disintegration of group identity among the black people as dominant factors to lead American Dream towards its failure in Afro-American context.