Monday, October 5, 2015

Can someone point out the themes, messages and morals of A Raisin in the Sun?

There's nothing wrong, of course, with reading something
in order to find a life lesson, moral, or message, It may work for simple stories (even
then, though, sometimes things aren't as simple as they appear), but that approach
doesn't really do justice to complex literary
works.


A Raisin in the Sun has a
number of themes. In addition to what the previous poster has stated, I would add that
there is very clear and sustained treatment of the conflict between generations of a
black American family. This conflict comes to light in the discussions of money and
religion, in particular.


As I see it, one difference
between a moral/life lesson/message and a theme is that the first can be boiled down to
a single statement that almost always ends up sounding like a cliche, whereas the second
often focuses ideas but doesn't reduce them to a simple statement that we've already
heard again and again.

No comments:

Post a Comment

Comment on the setting and character of "The Fall of the House of Usher."How does setting act as a character?

Excellent observation, as it identifies how the settings of Poe's stories reflect the characters of their protagonists. Whet...