The Coming of Age in Lorraine Hansberry's "A Raisin in the Sun"

The coming of age is an important theme in Lorraine Hansberry's "A Raisin in the Sun." Through adversity and struggles, both Younger children coming into their adulthood. Beneatha begins to lose her elevated idealsim in favor of embrasing her desperately sought after identity through her family and their experiences, and Walter experiences the consequences of a poor decision that moves him from the role of a son to the role of a man.

In A Raisin in the Sun, much of the dialogue that is Walters in the early part of the play is tied up in his efforts to get his family to see through his eyes. He wants acknowledgement from them of his dreams, their relevance, and possibilities. Most of all, he wants support from them and for them to all realize that he wants something more. A reader can summerize Walter's early message as "What about me? What about what I want? Won't someone give something up for me?"

Soon, Walter begins to miss work, which his family does not immediately realize, until his employer calls to say that if he isn't there the next day that he'll be replaced. When Mama asks Walter what he's been doing for three days, he tells her "Mama-you don't know all the things a man what got leisure can find to do in this city..." (85) and he proceeds to tell her that for the first two of the three days, he borrowed his friend Willy's car and looked at factories and farms. The third day he spent watching the Negros. This is the moment in which Mama gets the impression that she has been oppressing Walter the same as the world has-and puts trust in him to take the money to the bank (that which she received as life insurance payment from the death of her husband) and to deposit some for Beneatha's tuition and the rest would go into a checking account that he would control.