Raisin in the Sun Allusions

Acd English Allusions/Essential Terms in A Raisin in the Sun To say that A Raisin in the Sun has a lot of allusions is an understatement. Allusions serve several purposes in a work of literature. They ground the work in a specific time period and they also help to develop characterization, conflict, and theme. You are responsible for researching the allusions as we read. They are “fair game” and may appear on any quiz! Act 1, Scene 1 Colonel McCormick: owner and publisher of the Chicago Tribune newspaper; prominent Chicago resident Act 2, Scene 2 Garbo: legendary actress of 1930s; dramatic, mysterious; George calls Beneatha Greta Garbo because he thinks she is being overdramatic Hereros of Southwest Africa: the Hereros “quiet desperation”: "the mass of men threw a revolt against the oppressive lead lives of quiet desperation." He thinks Germans from 1904-1907 misplaced value is the cause: We feel a void in our lives, and we attempt to fill it Morgan Park: with things like money, possessions, and “If the salt loses its savor…”: Context accolades. When Ruth says that Beneatha is fresh — “move on up a little higher”: a song and then adds that Beneatha is as "fresh slop jars: a large pail used as a chamber as salt" — Beneatha counters with a pot or to receive waste water from a pedantic response, a phrase from the washbowl or the contents of chamber Bible pots. Impact- Beneatha is saying that if she Booker T. Washington: An  can't say her opinion, then she's nothing. African-American educator of the late She is simultaneously showing off her nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, knowledge of the Bible by quoting a who headed Tuskegee Institute, a college verse. Beneatha uses the quote with for African-Americans in Alabama. some pretentiousness to press the point Ku Klux Klan: a secret hate group that she knows the Bible from an inspired by the former, founded in 1915 intellectual point of view but that she does and currently active across the U.S., not believe in its religious messages. especially in the South, directed against black people, Muslims, Jews, Catholics, “No Ways Tired”: foreign-born individuals, and other groups. Act 1, Scene 2 Nigeria Liberia Tarzan missionary work heathenism Colonialism (British and French) Yoruba Assimilationism queen of the Nile Jacob’s kettle lynching streetcar Act 2, Scene 3 NAACP: the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, is a civil rights organization founded in 1909 to fight prejudice, lynching, and Jim Crow segregation, and to work for the betterment of "people of color." W. E.B. “Thirty pieces and a not a coin less!”: of  silver was the standard price of a slave Mrs. Miniver: Inspired by the 1940 novel Mrs. Miniver by Jan Struther, the film shows how the life of an unassuming British housewife in rural England is touched by World War II. Act 2, Scene 1  Madame Butterfly: Beneatha is dressed in Scarlet O’Hara: The heroine of the book Gone With the Wind. Scarlett is a shrewd, an African costume; in the stage manipulative southern belle who survives directions she is said to look more like two husbands and finally is matched in Butterfly than a Nigerian; the allusion refers to the character "Madame Butterfly" wits by a third, Rhett Butler. in Puccini's Italian opera  Kenyatta: Jomo Kenyatta, a Kenyan politician involved in the country's nationalist movement Chaka: he  became chief of the Zulu clan in 1816 and founded the great Zulu empire by conquering most of southern Africa  Uncle Tom: reference to Harriet Beecher Act 3 Stowe's book; black man who accepts the Monsieur le petit bourgeois noir U.S. Steel domination of a white man without The Man / Cap’n Boss / Mistuh Charley resistance sharecroppers Ashanti, Benin, Bantu: Ashanti people  from Africa speak the language of Bantu, Benin was the art produced in Africa  Greek mythology, a Titan Prometheus: In who was punished by Zeus for stealing fire from the gods and giving it to humankind