Group Names: ______

Period: _____

Introduction to A Raisin in the Sun: The American Dream

Instructions: Working in a small group, collaborate—make sure that everyvoice in your group is used and heard. Each group member must contribute at least one idea to your list. Assign the role of scribe to one group member to capture your discussion below.

STEP 1: The American Dream…..

LOOKS LIKE / SOUNDS LIKE / FEELS LIKE

STEP 2: Now, categorize your ideas above by placing one of the following symbols next to it in the column to the left of your idea.

S = SocialP = Political$ = Economical

E = EducationalR = Religious

STEP 3: Which groups of people have had trouble attaining “The American Dream?”

STEP 4: What are some of the obstacles to achieving The American Dream?

[Use your list and category designations to guide your discussion.]

Obstacle #1
Obstacle #2
Obstacle #3

STEP 5: Given the obstacles that some Americans have to overcome, what makes the American Dream appealing?

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Name: ______Period: _____

Introduction to A Raisin in the Sun: Pre-Reading Make-A-Prediction

The preface to A Raisin in the Sun is the poem “Harlem” from the collection “Montage of a Dream Deferred” by Langston Hughes.

1. What is the purpose of a preface?

______

2. Define. What do the wordsmontage and deferred mean?

MONTAGE: / DEFERRED:

3. Read “Harlem” from “Montage of a Dream Deferred.”

4. Using the Figurative Language Chart on the back, identify the similes and metaphors in the poem. Do at least four on your own, then share in your small group and add to your chart as needed.

5. What is the mood of the poem? Identify key words that create mood, such as sensory details.

6. Then discuss: What central question does the poem ask?

______

7. Even though the poem is phrased as a list of questions, Hughes is making a statement. What is Hughes’ message about dreams deferred?

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8. Discuss: Do you agree with Hughes? Give examples from personal experiences, books, television, or film plots about what happens when dreams are lost. Then, respond below.

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9. Why do you think Hansberry chose this poem as her preface? What do you think the play A Raisin in the Sun may be about?

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FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE CHART

LINE # / STATEMENT, PHRASE OR QUESTION / TYPE OF FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE / MEANING/MESSAGE

“Harlem” from “Montage of a Dream Deferred” by Langston Hughes

Name: ______Period: _____

Exit Ticket: Introduction to A Raisin in the Sun “The American Dream”

On your own, write out your definition of “The American Dream.” Use complete sentences and include the prompt in your response.

______

Name: ______Period: ______

Exit Ticket: Introduction to A Raisin in the Sun “The American Dream”

On your own, write out your definition of “The American Dream.” Use complete sentences and include the prompt in your response.

______

Name: ______Period: _____

Exit Ticket: Introduction to A Raisin in the Sun “The American Dream”

On your own, write out your definition of “The American Dream.” Use complete sentences and include the prompt in your response.

______

Historical Background

The American Dream - A historical overview

The American Dream describes an attitude of hope and faith that looks forward to the fulfillment of human wishes and desires. What these wishes are, were expressed in Thomas Jefferson's Declaration of Independence of 1776, where it was stated:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

This search for freedom and happiness actually goes back to the very beginning of American civilization, to the time of the first settlers. The Puritan Fathers who first came to New England (one of the first states to be settled), the Quakers who came to Pennsylvania (another American state), and the Huguenots in Virginia were all religious refugees who were driven to the New World by persecution. To these people, America represented a new life of freedom, holding a promise of spiritual and material happiness.

For those settlers who were not so religiously inclined, America was still a fairyland, a land of great possibilities. It was also a rich mine of natural resources. And so the first thirteen colonies came into being, amidst the religious and materialistic hopes of the first settlers. Material prosperity and progress kept pace with religious and spiritual goals because the Puritans and the Quakers alike approved of industry and material advancement. For, whereas physical pleasures were evil, hard work and achievements were regarded as indications of inner goodness.

When the Eastern Seaboard, comprising the thirteen colonies, became overcrowded, this pursuit of happiness and freedom shifted inland with the drive westward beyond the Appalachian Mountains. The opening of the Middle and Western states increased the sense of hope and faith. And this looking forward beyond the immediate present, this belief in the future, has become a national characteristic that may partly explain the speed of American advancement in so many areas of activities. The democratic system, first voiced in Jefferson's Declaration of Independence in 1776, may be traced to this basic attitude of hope and confidence.

The American Dream, however, originally relates to a desire for spiritual and material improvement. What happened was that, from one point of view, the material aspect of the dream was too easily and too quickly achieved, with the result that it soon outpaced and even obliterated the early spiritual ideals. So there emerged a state of material well-being but lacking in spiritual life or purpose. So that when Fitzgerald produced Gatsby, modeled no doubt on the writer's own faith in life, he seemed to have created a character who represented an early American in whom the Dream was still very much alive.

From another point of view, the American Dream has totally failed to bring any kind of fulfillment, whether spiritual or material. For all the progress and prosperity, for all the declaration of democratic principles, there are still poverty, discrimination and exploitation. And as for values and morality, there are also hypocrisy, corruption and suppression a way The Great Gatsby is also a comment on this condition. Other writers have written about these hard truths which have made the American Dream an illusion: John Steinbeck (1902-) in The Grapes of Wrath (1939) and J. D. Salinger (1919-) in The Catcher in the Rye (1951) are two examples.

Trying to define the American Dream

The concept of THE AMERICAN DREAM is as central to an understanding of the history and culture of the U.S. as it is difficult to define. Books on the Dream are legion, but nobody has yet managed to provide a generally accepted definition. Therefore, any attempt at approaching THE AMERICAN DREAM must resort to generalizations and simplifications.

Historically speaking, the ever-changing mixture of hopes and beliefs, values and convictions for which, as late as 1931, James T. Adams coined the term THE AMERICAN DREAM gradually evolved out of the interplay between the manifold cultural ideas which Europeans projected upon the New World and the conditions of life which they encountered there. These projections resulted in different images of America which developed consecutively and intermixed in various ways. The three major image clusters are:

  • the MYTHIC IMAGES of America as a land of milk and honey and a new “earthly paradise” at the farthest edge of the known world, as a “brave new world” which European writers from Erasmus of Rotterdam to William Shakespeare envisioned as a combination of the Biblical Garden of Eden, the Golden Age of classical antiquity, and the pastoral Arcadia of Renaissance literature;
  • the RELIGIOUS IMAGES of America where the Puritans as God’s chosen people were called upon to found “a new Heaven and a new Earth in new Churches, and a new Commonwealth together” (Edward Johnson), to erect their New Jerusalem on the virgin soil of the American continent, and to prepare for the Second Coming of Christ, which they knew would “begin in America” (Jonathan Edwards);
  • the POLITICAL IMAGES of America as the country in which the Enlightenment philosophers saw the place where natural rights and natural laws would become reality, and where a DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE that granted life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness to every citizen resulted in a political system that filled European serfs with admiration and envy.

These concepts and ideas laid the ground for what would come to be called THE AMERICAN DREAM but originally was a European dream of an enticing New World, often defined as “an asylum for mankind” which attracted millions of exploited Europeans who set out for an imaginary “America” in the hope of finding a place where they would be given a chance to improve their living conditions and to achieve their desired self-fulfillment.

The complex pattern of convictions and aspirations that came to be known as THE AMERICAN DREAM or, for those who searched for it in vain, as THE AMERICAN NIGHTMARE of broken promises and frustrated hopes, can thus be subdivided into the following elements:

  • the future-oriented belief in a steady improvement of individual, communal, and societal conditions of existence, that is, the belief in progress;
  • the conviction that everybody can realize his highest ambitions by means of his or her own endeavors, that is, the belief in the general attainability of success;
  • the certainty that God has singled out America as his chosen country and has appointed the Americans to convert the rest of the world to true American-style democracy, that is, the belief in American exceptionalism and in the newly formed nation’s MANIFEST DESTINY:
  • the assurance that, in the context of civilizations westward movement, ever new boundaries are to be crossed and ever new obstacles are to be surmounted, that is, the idea of the continual challenge of respective frontiers;
  • the belief in the American form of government of the people, by the people and for the people as the sole guarantor of liberty and equality, and
  • the idea that immigrants of different nationalities, different ethnic stock and different religions can be fused into a new nation, that is, the conviction expressed in the notion of the MELTING POT and its historical mutations from cultural pluralism through multi-ethnicity to multiculturalism.