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Setting (time) Between 1945 and 1959. Setting (place) The South Side of Chicago. Protagonist Walter Lee Younger. Major conflict The Youngers, a working-class Black family, struggle against economic hardship and racial prejudice.
A Raisin in the Sun portrays a few weeks in the life of the Youngers, a Black family living on the South Side of Chicago in the 1950s. When the play opens, the Youngers are about to receive an insurance check for $10,000. This money comes from the deceased Mr. Younger’s life insurance policy.
- Lorraine Hansberry
- 1959
- Author Biography
- Plot Summary
- Characters
- Themes
- Style
- Historical Context
- Critical Overview
- Criticism
- Further Reading
Born in Chicago in 1930, Lorraine Hansberrywas the youngest of four children. Her father, Carl Hansberry, was a successful real estate agent—and his family hence middle-class—who bought a house in a previously all-white neighborhood when Lorraine was eight years old. His attempt to move his family into this home created much tension, since Chicago ...
Act I, Scene One
The opening scene of A Raisin in the Sun occurs on a Friday morning when the members of the Younger family are preparing to go to school or work. During this scene, as in the opening scene of most plays, several key pieces of information are revealed. The family’s inadequate living situation is conveyed through the fact that they share a bathroom with other tenants in their apartment houseand through the fact that Travis must sleep on the sofa in the living room. As crucial, Walter’s conversa...
Act I, Scene Two
This scene occurs the following morning, with most of the family cleaning house and waiting for the mailman. Ruth, however, has gone out, and Mama implies that it might be because she’s pregnant. Beneatha states that she’s about to receive a visitor, Joseph Asagai, from Nigeria. There follows a discussion of European colonialism in Africa—although Mama appears somewhat ignorant, Beneatha’s knowledge seems particularly new and her attitude self-righteous. At this point, Ruth returns and confir...
Act II, Scene One
Later that day, Beneatha appears in an African gown Asagai has given her. Walter is drunk and wants to act like an African warrior. George Murchison arrives to pick up Beneatha, but he is displeased at her appearance and refuses to take her seriously. She is, he says, “eccentric.” Walter responds to George antagonistically, describing him as wearing “faggoty-looking white shoes.” Ruth understands that something has gone drastically wrong, and that whatever she and Walter once shared, that lov...
Joseph Asagai
Joseph Asagai is a friend of Beneatha’s who has been out of town all summer. He is from Nigeria and introduces Beneatha to Nigerian culture. He brings her a native African dress, for example, and also encourages her to let her hair grow naturally rather than have it straightened—although this encouragement is phrased in terms of an insult. He, in other words, introduces issues that would become prominent in the United Statesduring the decade following the production of this play (issues relat...
Bobo
Bobo is an extremely minor character. He appears near the end of the scene to convey the bad news that his and Walter’s friend has absconded with their money. He feels as dejected as Walter since the amount of money he had contributed consisted of his entire savings.
Mrs. Johnson
Mrs. Johnson is a neighbor of the Youngers, and she is portrayed as nosy and manipulative. In her primary scene, she appears to be jealous of the Youngers’s good fortune and seems to want to ruin it for them by raising their fears. In some versions of this play, her role is eliminated.
Race and Racism
The clear primary theme of A Raisin in the Sun has to do with race and racism. The Youngers live in a segregated neighborhood in a city that remains one of the most segregated in the United States. Virtually every act they perform is affected by their race. Ruth is employed as a domestic servant and Walter as a chauffeur in part because they are black—they are the servants, that is, of white people. They are limited to their poorly maintained apartment in part because they have low-paying job...
Prejudice and Tolerance
Closely related to the theme of race and racism is the theme of prejudice and tolerance. Karl Lindner and his neighbors are clearly prejudiced against black people. Yet other forms of prejudice and intolerance also surface in the play. Walter responds to George Murchison aggressively because George is wealthy and educated; educated men seem to Walter somehow less masculine. Similarly, although Joseph Asagai encourages Beneatha to feel proud of her racial identity, he discourages her from feel...
Civil Rights
Also related to the theme of race and racism as well as to the theme of prejudice and tolerance is the theme of Civil Rights. Although this play would debut before the major Civil Rights movement occurred in the United States during the 1960s, it raises many of the issues that would eventually be raised by the larger culture.“Civil Rights” generally refer to the rights a person has by law—such as the right to vote or the right to attend an adequate schools—and are often also referred to as hu...
Setting
Among the most important elements of A Raisin in the Sun is its setting. Because the Youngers are attempting to buy a new home in a different neighborhood, their current apartment and neighborhood achieve particular significance. The play takes place in a segregated Chicago neighborhood, “sometime between World War IIand the present,” which for Hansberry would be the late 1950s. In other words, the play occurs during the late 1940sor the 1950s, a time when many Americans were prosperous and w...
Allusion
Two significant allusions are prominent in this play—one literary and one historical. The title of the play, A Raisin in the Sun, is taken from a poem by Langston Hughes, “Harlem.” Langston Hughes was a prominent African American poet during the Harlem Renaissance, a period during the 1920s when many African American writers achieved considerable stature. The poem asks whether a dream deferred, or put off, dries up “like a raisin in the sun” or whether it explodes. During the play, Mama reali...
Climax
The climax of a work of literature occurs at the point when the tension can get no greater and the conflicts must resolve. In longer works, there may be several points of heightened tension before the final resolution. The climax of A Raisin in the Sunoccurs when Karl Lindner visits the house for the second time, when Walter is about to accept his offer but changes his mind. The audience understands that while the Youngers may now achieve their dreams, their lives in this racist culture will...
The Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s
A Raisin in the Sun directly addresses the issue of segregated housing in the United States. While many neighborhoods remain effectively segregated today, such segregation was legally enforced during the 1950s. Despite several Constitutional Amendments subsequent to the Civil War, African Americans were denied many civil rights a full century later. In 1954, the case of Brown vs. Board of Education was tried in Kansas; it reached the United States Supreme Courtin 1955. The Court found that se...
COMPARE & CONTRAST
1. 1950s: Schools and neighborhoods were racially (and sometimes ethnically) segregated, often by law. These laws received several major court challenges during this decade; many of the laws were declared unconstitutional. Today:Many neighborhoods and schools remain segregated despite legal and cultural attempts to reverse this situation. On the other hand, many schools, including prestigious universities, are completely integrated. Yet Affirmative Action, the practice through which this inte...
Literature and Arts in the 1950s
Artistically and culturally, the 1950s are commonly thought of as a repressed decade, often with good reason. It wasn’t until 1959, for example, that Lady Chatterly’s Loverby D.H. Lawrence was permitted to be distributed in the United States. Definitions of obscenity shifted during this decade, as did many other cultural assumptions. A Raisin in the Sun was only one of several significant plays which opened on Broadway during this period. Others include Sweet Bird of Youth by Tennessee Willia...
A Raisin in the Sun is easily Lorraine Hansberry’s best-known work, although her early death is certainly a factor in her limited oeuvre. From its beginning, this play was critically and commercially successful. After a brief run in New Haven, Connecticut, it opened on Broadway in 1959, where it ran for 530 performances. Although this was the first...
L. M. Domina
Domina is a poet and author who also teaches at Hofstra University. In this essay Domina examines both the racial and gender roles played out in Hansberry’s drama. In many ways, A Raisin in the Sunseems to forecast events that would transpire during the decade following its initial production and beyond. The play raises issues of racial interaction and justice, as well as gender roles, class, and the nature of the American dream. It situates these questions, however, within the context of ind...
WHAT DO I READ NEXT?
1. Native Son by Richard Wright, which was published in 1940, opens with a scene in which a family attempts to kill a rat. The protagonist, Bigger Thomas, becomes a chauffeur and eventually kills the daughter of his boss. 2. The Selected Poems of Langston Hughes, published in 1987, contain much of the work Hughes published, including the poem “Harlem.” Hughes’s poems both protest injustice and celebrate beauty. 3. To Be Young, Gifted, and Blackis a collection of autobiographical writings by L...
Gerald Weales
In this appraisal of Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun, Weales examines the play’s dramatic qualities and offers his ideas as to why it won the New York Drama Critics’ Award in 1959. Weales is an American drama critic; he is a winner of the George Jean Nathan Award for drama criticism and the author of numerous books on drama. On the day that the New York Drama Critics’ Award was announced, a student stopped me as I walked across the campus—where I pass as an expert on die theater—and...
Dedmond, Francis. “Lorraine Hansberry” in American Playwrights since 1945: A Guide to Scholarship, Criticism, and Performance,edited by Philip C. Kolin, Greenwood, 1989, pp. 155-68. Hansberry, Lorraine. “Willie Loman, Walter Younger, and He Who Must Live” in the Village Voice,Vol. IV, no. 42, August 12, 1959, pp. 7-8. Howes, Kelly King, editor. “Lo...
Raisin in the Sun. First produced in 1959, Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun was the winner of the New York Critics Circle Best Play of the Year and its impact on American theatre is as strong today as when it first premiered.
A Raisin in the Sun Introduction. More. A Raisin in the Sun, written by Lorraine Hansberry and produced on stage in 1959, marks a watershed moment in American theater. On the face of it, A Raisin in the Sun was not destined for success.
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Hansberry attended the University of Wisconsin for several years before dropping out and moving to New York in 1950 to pursue writing and social activism. Hansberry’s best-known work, A Raisin in the Sun, premiered in 1959, making her the first African-American female playwright to have a play produced on Broadway.
Biting her lip to contain her own pride in Walter, Ruth agrees that he did. Ruth exits, leaving Mama alone in the apartment. Mama looks around at the family’s home and, overcome with emotion, stifles a cry. She exits the apartment only to reenter a moment later, retrieving her plant and leaving for the final time.
