While Baraka's play Dutchman ends in fatal violence against a young black male endeavoring in vain to assert his individual identity and manhood, Lorraine Hansberry's A Raisin in the Sun, which takes place in the 1950's, on Chicago's South Side, ends with Walter Younger Jr. being defeated in his quest for individual independence, autonomy, and a sense of authentic manhood apart from his race by a crooked partner and supposed coordinator of Walter and his friends' liquor store plan, who instead runs off with the money from Walter's mother's life insurance settlement that Walter has invested.

Within this play, Walter's sense of manhood depends, like Clay's in Baraka's Dutchman, on his ability (or not) to realize his dreams and aspirations autonomously, apart from race. Like Clay's in Baraka's Dutchman, these are no different from any man's dreams, white or black: autonomy; respectability; the right to pursue and create his own...
[ View Full Essay]