A Raisin In The Sun - Theme Essays - English-language Films

A Raisin In The Sun - Theme *INTRO* A dream may not necessarily be just a dream. With ambition and determination, it can come true in time. Lorraine Hansberry illustrates this theme of achieving success in her play A Raisin in the Sun. The play is about the problems that the economically impoverished African American Younger family faces in trying to make their dreams come true, and the means by which they finally see some light at the end of the tunnel. Lena is Walter and Beneatha's mother. Walter is married to Ruth and has a son whose name is Travis. Lorraine Hansberry shows how Lena's dream of having a house in a good neighborhood finally comes true in spite of the multitude of difficulties that she faces. The ambition and determination exemplified by Lena, Walter and Ruth makes this happen. *BODY 1* Keeping the dream of stability and wellness constantly in mind, and working towards it, Lena is surely the protagonist in the play. Her husband's decease is a big setback for her but she still continues to struggle towards achieving stability. Her moral values of self-pride and encouragement help Walter to produce strength in him to do the right thing. Her installation of love in Beneatha for the members of her family makes Beneatha not hate her brother Walter when he makes some terribly wrong decisions. She has a dream of moving into a bigger and better house since many years. Even after a large amount of the money was lost, she still adamantly acted on that dream and made it come true. This was projected in the play by her plant. It stayed alive in spite of all the difficulties such as very little sunshine, etc. that it faced. It also gave her hope all the way along. She is thus the best example of putting the family's needs first. *BODY 2* Walter, mama's son, feels that every dream he has gets taken away from him. When he learns that mama was receiving a large amount of money, he decided to want to use it towards his dream of owning a business and thus not having to work for someone. As long as they money was there, he did whatever he could to fulfill his dream because it was bubbling. However, it festered and consumed money, and then ran away. The money disappeared and so did the dream. Thus, he appears to be his own antagonist and even the antagonist of the play at first. Hence, even though he has an unselfish character, it gets overshadowed by his unwise decision of giving the money away to his friend who cheated him. He then learns that he has to set his dreams aside for the sake of the family, that pride in him and his family were inseparable and that anything that harms one would harm the other. He proves that by surprisingly telling Mr. Lindner that his family was moving into the house in the white neig hborhood in spite of them being not wanted there. Right when this was about to occur, there is a feeling of dislike towards Walter because he had resulted in the loss of a large part of the money. What was thereby expected was that he would continue worrying about money and sell their dream house to Mr. Lindner. Instead, he does an unexpected, honorable thing. *BODY 3* Walter's wife Ruth too seems to be hand in hand with mama as far as mama's dreams of achieving wellness and stability went. She too like Walter saw a resolution in the insurance check arriving in the mail. The money would let her fulfill hers and mama's dream of owning a house and deserting the dilapidated apartment that she was now living in. She wanted to keep her family together and in working order. The hopes for that began to fall apart when Walter lost a large part of the money. She in fact had even warned him in advance of the undependability of his friend Willy Harris. Later, she even thought about sacrificing her second unborn baby due to financial reasons by having an abortion even though it was highly risky to do so then. Finally, she persuaded

Biography of Damien Hirst, British Contemporary Artist

Biography of Damien Hirst, British Contemporary Artist Damien Hirst (born June 7, 1965) is a controversial contemporary British artist. He is the best-known member of the Young British Artists, a group that shook up the U.K.s art scene in the 1990s. Some of Hirsts most famous works feature dead animals preserved in formaldehyde. Fast Facts: Damien Hirst Occupation: ArtistKnown For: Key member of the Young British Artists and the creator of controversial, sometimes shocking artwork.Born: June 7, 1965 in Bristol, EnglandEducation: Goldsmiths, University of LondonSelected Works: The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living (1992), For the Love of God (2007)Notable Quote: I was taught to confront things you cant avoid. Death is one of those things. Early Life and Career Damien Hirst (born Damien Steven Brennan) was born in Bristol and grew up in Leeds, England. His mother later described him as a morbid child, interested in grisly and gruesome images of disease and injury. These subjects would later inform some of the artists iconic works. Hirst had several run-ins with the law, including two arrests for shoplifting. He failed numerous other academic subjects, but he succeeded in art and drawing. Damien attended the Jacob Kramer School of Art in Leeds, and in the late 1980s, he studied art at Goldsmiths, University of London. In 1988, in his second year at Goldsmith, Damien Hirst organized an independent student exhibition titled Freeze in an empty London Port Authority building. It was the first significant event organized by a group that would become known as the Young British Artists. The final version of the exhibition included two of Hirsts iconic spot paintings: multicolored spots on white or near-white backgrounds painted by hand with glossy house paint. International Success Damien Hirsts first solo exhibition, In and Out of Love, took place in an empty shop on Woodstock Street in central London in 1991. During that year, he met the Iraqi-British businessman Charles Saatchi, who became a primary patron. Saatchi offered to fund any art that Hirst wanted to create. The result was a work titled The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living. It consisted of a shark preserved in formaldehyde inside in a tank. The piece was part of one of the first Young British Artists exhibitions at the Saatchi Gallery in 1992. As a result of the media attention surrounding the piece, Hirst earned a nomination for the U.K.s Turner Prize for distinguished young artists, but he lost to Grenville Davey. In 1993, Hirsts first major international work at the Venice Biennale was titled Mother and Child Divided. The work included a cow and a calf cut into sections and exhibited in separate tanks. The next year, Hirst exhibited a similar piece: Away from the Flock, which featured a sheep preserved in formaldehyde. During the exhibition, the artist Mark Bridger entered the gallery and poured black ink into the tank, then offered a new title for the work: Black Sheep. Bridger was prosecuted, but at Hirsts request, his sentence was light: two years of probation. In 1995, Damien Hirst won the Turner Prize. In the latter half of the decade, he presented solo shows in Seoul, London, and Salzburg. He also branched out into directing music videos and short films, and he formed the band Fat Les with actor Keith Allen and Alex James of the rock group Blur. By the end of the decade, the Young British Artists, including Hirst, were seen as a key part of the mainstream art scene in the U.K. Later Career On September 10, 2002, the day before the one-year anniversary of the September 11, 2001 World Trade Center terrorist attacks in New York City, Hirst released a statement describing the attacks as kind of like an artwork in its own right. The outrage was quick and severe. A week later, he issued a public apology. After meeting Joe Strummer of the band The Clash in 1995, Damien Hirst became good friends with the guitarist. In late 2002, Strummer died of a heart attack. Hirst stated it had a powerful effect: It was the first time I felt mortal. In March 2005, Hirst exhibited 30 paintings at the Gagosian Gallery in New York. They took over three years to complete and were based on photos taken mostly by assistants but finished by Hirst. In 2006, he introduced the work: A Thousand Years (1990). It contains a life cycle of maggots hatching inside a box, turning into flies, and feeding on a bloody, severed cows head in a glass display case. The case included buzzing live flies, many of which were electrocuted in a device designed to ward off insects. The famed artist Francis Bacon praised A Thousand Years (1990) in a letter to a friend a month before he died. In 2007, Hirst presented the piece For the Love of God, a human skull copied in platinum and studded with over 8,600 diamonds. The only part of the original skull included are the teeth. The price for the work was $100,000,000. No one bought it at the original exhibition, but a consortium that included Hirst himself purchased it in August 2008. Praise and Criticism Damien Hirst has earned praise for drumming up new interest in the arts through his celebrity persona and sense of the dramatic. He helped bring the British art scene back to prominence internationally. His supporters, including his benefactor Saatchi and many other noted artists, say that Hirst is a showman, but that getting the attention of the public is essential. He is sometimes mentioned in the company of 20th-century masters like Andy Warhol and Jackson Pollock. However, detractors question whether there is anything artistic about dead, preserved animals. Brian Sewell, an Evening Standard art critic, said that Hirsts art is no more interesting than a stuffed pike over a pub door. A 2009 Hirst show titled No Love Lost, which featured his paintings, received almost universal criticism. His efforts were described as shockingly bad. Plagiarism Controversy In 2000, designer Norman Emms sued Damien Hirst over the sculpture Hymn, which was a reproduction of the Young Scientist Anatomy Set, designed by Emms and manufactured by Humbrol. Hirst paid an out-of-court settlement to two charities and Emms. In 2007, artist John LeKay, a former friend of Hirst, claimed that the inspiration for many of Hirsts works came from the Carolina Biological Supply Company catalog. He also claimed that the diamond-encrusted skull titled For the Love of God was inspired by LeKays own crystal skull work in 1993. In response to a number of other claims of copyright infringement or outright plagiarism, Hirst said, As a human being, as you go through life, you just do collect. Personal Life Between 1992 and 2012, Hirst lived with his girlfriend, Maia Norman. They have three sons: Connor Ojala, Cassius Atticus, and Cyrus Joe. Hirst is known to spend much of his private time at a farmhouse in Devon, England. He also owns a large compound in Mexico where multiple artists help carry out his projects at his art studio. Source Gallagher, Ann. Damien Hirst. Tate, 2012.