A Raisin In the Sun
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World of the 1950s
• Population: 151,684,000 (U.S. Dept. of
Commerce, Bureau of the Census)
• Unemployed: 3,288,000
• Life expectancy: Women 71.1, men
65.6
• Car Sales: 6,665,800
• Average Salary: $2,992
• Labor Force male/female: 5/2
• Cost of a loaf of bread: $0.14
• Bomb shelter plans, like the government
pamphlet You Can Survive, become
widely available
A Note on the Title
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Lorraine Hansberry took the title of A Raisin in
the Sun from a line in Langston Hughes’s
famous 1951 poem “Harlem.”
“Harlem” captures the tension between the need
for black expression and the impossibility of that
expression because of American society’s
oppression of its black population.
In the poem, Hughes asks whether a “dream
deferred”—a dream put on hold—withers up “like
a raisin in the sun.”
More on the title
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His lines confront the racist and
dehumanizing attitude prevalent in American
society before the civil rights movement of
the 1960s.
Hansberry’s reference to Hughes’s poem in
her play’s title highlights the importance of
dreams in A Raisin in the Sun and the
struggle that her characters face to realize
their individual dreams, a struggle tied to
the more fundamental black dream of
equality in America.
The play
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A Raisin in the Sun can be considered a turning
point in American art because it addresses so
many issues important during the 1950s in the
United States.
The stereotype of 1950s America as a land of
happy housewives and blacks content with their
inferior status resulted in an uprising of social
resentment that would finally find public voice
in the civil rights and feminist movements of
the 1960s.
Character List
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Walter Lee Younger - The
protagonist of the play. He
wants to be rich; wants to
invest his father’s insurance
money in a new liquor store
venture.
Lena Younger (“Mama”) religious, moral, and
maternal. She wants to use
her husband’s insurance
money as a down payment
on a house with a backyard
to fulfill her dream for her
family to move up in
the world.
More characters
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Beneatha Younger (“Bennie”) Beneatha is twenty years old, she attends
college, and is better educated than the
rest of the Younger family. She dreams
of being a doctor and struggles to
determine her identity as a well-educated black
woman.
Ruth Younger Walter’s wife and Travis’s mother. Ruth
takes care of the Youngers’ small
apartment. She is about thirty, but her
weariness makes her seem older.
Characters cont.
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Travis Younger - Walter and
Ruth’s sheltered young son.
Travis earns some money by
carrying grocery bags and
likes to play outside with other
neighborhood children, but he
has no bedroom and sleeps on
the living-room sofa.
Joseph Asagai - A Nigerian student in love with Beneatha. Asagai,
as he is often called, is very proud of his African heritage, and
Beneatha hopes to learn about her African heritage from him.
Even more characters
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George Murchison - A wealthy, AfricanAmerican man who dates Beneatha. The
Youngers approve of George, but Beneatha
dislikes his willingness to submit to white
culture and forget his African heritage.
Mr. Karl Lindner - The only white character in
the play. He offers the Youngers a deal to
reconsider moving into his (all-white)
neighborhood.
Mrs. Johnson - The Youngers’ neighbor; warns
them about moving into a predominately
white neighborhood.
Themes
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A Raisin in the Sun is essentially about dreams, as
the main characters struggle to deal with the
oppressive circumstances that rule their lives.
Every member of the Younger family has a separate,
individual dream—Beneatha wants to become a
doctor, for example, and Walter wants to have
money so that he can afford things for his family.
The Youngers struggle to attain these dreams
throughout the play, and much of their happiness
and depression is directly related to their attainment
of, or failure to attain, these dreams.
The Need to Fight Racial
Discrimination
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The character of Mr. Lindner
makes the theme of racial
discrimination prominent in the
plot as an issue that the
Youngers cannot avoid.
Mr. Lindner and the people he
represents can only see the color
of the Younger family’s skin,
Ultimately, the Youngers respond
to this discrimination with
defiance and strength.
The Importance of
Family
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The Youngers struggle socially and
economically throughout the play but unite
in the end to realize their dream of buying a
house.
Mama strongly believes in the importance of
family, and she tries to teach this value to
her family as she struggles to keep them
together and functioning.
Walter and Beneatha learn this lesson about
family at the end of the play.
Setting: The Home
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The Younger apartment is the only setting
throughout the play, emphasizing the
centrality of the home.
The home is a galvanizing force for the
family, one that Mama sees as crucial to
the family’s unity.
The play ends, fittingly, when Mama,
lagging behind, finally leaves the
apartment.
Crowded Quarters
The housing crunch in
Northern cities, along
with the segregation
and discrimination
facing African
Americans attempting to
find places to live, led to
extremely crowded
conditions, such as
those pictured in this
Chicago residence in
1941.
Symbols
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“Eat Your Eggs”
Being quiet and eating one’s eggs represents an
acceptance of the adversity that Walter and the rest
of the Youngers face in life. Walter believes that
Ruth, who is making his eggs, keeps him from
achieving his dream, and he argues that she should
be more supportive of him. The eggs she makes
every day symbolize her mechanical approach to
supporting him. She provides him with nourishment,
but always in the same, predictable way.
Mama’s Plant
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The most overt symbol in the play,
Mama’s plant represents both Mama’s
care and her dream for her family.
The plant also symbolizes her dream
to own a house and, more specifically,
to have a garden and a yard
Beneatha’s Hair
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When the play begins, Beneatha
has straightened hair. Midway
through the play, after Asagai visits
her and questions her hairstyle, she
cuts her Caucasian-seeming hair.
Her new, radical afro represents her
embracing of her heritage.
This prefigures the 1960s cultural
credo that black is beautiful.