When people think of the "American Dream" they generally think a middle class, well-off family in a beautiful home with a couple of kids and maybe a dog. Both Lorraine Hansberry's A Raisin in the Sun and Author Miller's Death of A Salesman deal with the concept of having a dream and trying to achieve it. In some sense both families have the same dream, a dream to be successful and happy, and the dream to have money. But the families face many different obstacles that they must overcome. Some are physical and some are mental or emotional struggles. Also in both plays, each member of the family has their own personal dream and sometimes struggle to realize that the family is the most important symbol in a home. Throughout both plays we see the struggles and hardships that both families must face in order to attain their dreams. .
In Lorraine Hansberry's A Raisin in the Sun, we see a poor black family struggling to keep their family united. The play is almost entirely based on the concept of dreams, whether it is an individual dream or the family dream. At the beginning of the play we see all of the characters individual dreams. Mama strongly believes in the importance of family and tries throughout the play to teach this to her children and grandchildren. Dreams are also more important to her than material wealth, and her dream is to one day own a house. Ruth, Mama's daughter-in-law, agrees with Mama. She too sees the importance of family and having a new home to unite the family. Mama's son, Walter has a more selfish dream of opening a liquor store with his friends. He believes that money is the way to happiness and that it will solve all of the family problems. He learns the hard way that money is only a physical element, and not happiness. Walter, for the most part, is not successful with money and most of his actions throughout the play hurt the family. He rarely listens to his mother, wife, and sister's advice and it is not until the end of the play that he comes to understand that he must listen to his own family in order to help them.
