A Raisin in the Sun (1959). Summary and Description

Opening on Broadway in March 1959, A Raisin in the Sun changed the course of American theater history. For the first time ever, theatergoers witnessed a Broadway play written by a black woman, which celebrated black culture and portrayed black resistance to white oppression across generations. This groundbreaking work opened the door for other African-American playwrights. It was a landmark in American theater—a trailblazer for black theater that allowed others to get work produced. Woodie King states in his 1979 Freedomways article, “To mention all of the artists whose careers were enhanced by their encounters with Hansberry and A Raisin in the Sun would read like a Who’s Who in the black theater” (King 221).

Strongly influenced by Harlem Renaissance writers such as Countee Cullen and Langston Hughes, Hansberry sought to overcome stereotyped images of African Americans, reclaiming interest and pride in ancestry, while avoiding the romanticizing and exoticism that writers of that period often exhibited. A Raisin in the Sun was originally titled “Crystal Stair,” based on a line from the Langston Hughes poem “Mother to Son,” in which a mother encourages her son to be strong even though life is a struggle. Hansberry abandoned the working title for a line in another Hughes poem, “Harlem.”

In it Hughes asks the question, “What happens to a dream deferred / Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun?” While both titles are apt—the play is certainly about a mother-and-son relationship—unfulfilled dreams, dreams deferred, seem to be the central themes of the play, linking all the central characters. Mama Younger dreams of providing a safe home for her family, Walter Lee dreams of becoming a successful businessman, Ruth dreams of raising her children in a home with a yard for them to play in, Beneatha dreams of becoming a doctor, while her boyfriend, Joseph Asagai, dreams of returning to Africa to be a leader for his people. The potential for her characters exists side by side with the reality of the life they live within their cramped apartment.

Set in the Youngers’ apartment in Chicago’s South Side Black Belt, A Raisin in the Sun is a domestic, or “kitchen sink,” drama. The Younger family, Mama (Lena) Younger; her son Walter Lee and his wife, Ruth; their son, Travis; and Mama’s daughter Beneatha all live in a roach-infested apartment, each chained to a low-paying service job— Walter a chauffer, Ruth and Mama both domestics. A life insurance check for Mama’s deceased husband, Big Walter, arrives, and their dreams of a better life become possible. Each character dreams of money. It is Mama’s money, but in order to support Walter Lee and establish his role as the head of the family, she gives it to him to handle—asking him to put aside a certain amount for his sister, Beneatha’s, medical school education. Tragically, Walter Lee uses all of the money to buy a liquor store and is swindled by an unworthy friend, a friend all of the family has cautioned Walter to distrust.

Hansberry’s realistic style creates complex, distinct, flawed characters who allow readers to look beyond stereotypes and see “everyman” engaged in family conflict. The issues at stake in A Raisin in the Sun are more than the generational and marital conflicts in a family power struggle; they are about larger ideological conflicts and social issues: poverty, race, religion, women’s rights, integrity, freedom, and cultural identity. In an interview about writing, Han- sberry discussed how her works’ realism demanded the imposition of a point of view, showing the audience not only what is, but also what is possible. In a period when many of her contemporaries were involved in the theater of the absurd, which laughs in the face of despair, Hansberry “strove for something more meaningful” (Carter 126).

The universality of the issues depicted in A Raisin in the Sun caused even those critics who praised it to misunderstand the central issue of race. Misinterpreting a Hansberry quote from a New York Times interview in which she stated that it was not a “negro play,” many critics began to write that the play could just as easily have been about a white family. Other critics believed that the play was a pro-integration statement. Hansberry was incensed. While she had focused on specifics to create universal truths, she felt very strongly that her play was about an African-American family, and not just an African-American family, an African-American South Side Chicago family. Attempting to clarify her vision, Hansberry said, “The thing I tried to show was the many gradations even in one Negro family, the clash of the old and the new, but most of all the unbelievable courage of the Negro People” (Dannett 62). While she admitted that multigenerational self-sacrificing love was universal, she insisted that her play was intended to be a microcosm for the black experience in America. In a letter to her mother on the night of the play’s New Haven opening, Hansberry wrote:

Mama, it is a play that tells the truth about people—Negroes and life and I think it will help a lot of people understand how we are just as complicated as they are—and just as mixed up—but above all, that we have among our miserable and downtrodden ranks—people who are the very essence of human dignity. That is what, after all the laughter and tears, the play is supposed to say.

I hope it will make you very proud. (McKissack 77-78) Hansberry refuted the charges of critics—black and white—that the central message of the play was assimilationist. Although Hansberry was from a middle-class family, she saw firsthand the tension between wanting to assimilate and maintaining pride in one’s own culture. In A Raisin in the Sun, the Youngers want to move to the white neighborhood not to integrate but to stand firm against those people who want to keep them out because of their skin color. In “First Light of a New Day,” Aishah Rahman makes a claim for the essential blackness of the play: “Hansberry also realized that in order to possess a comprehensive world view, black writers must first look inward, and toward their own people. This was the seminal philosophy of the black arts movement of the ’60s and made Hansberry the literary foremother of the writers of that period” (quoted in Carter 64).

Throughout the play the characters of Beneatha and Joseph Asagai weigh what it means to be African with what it means to be an African American. In exploring the idea of not truly belonging to either culture, the influence of Hansberry’s mentor W. E. B. DuBois is clear. DuBois spoke of a double consciousness existing within the African-American population in his groundbreaking book The Souls of Black Folk: “It is a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one’s self through the eyes of others, of measuring one’s soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity. One ever feels his two-ness,—an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder” (DuBois 9).

Through the poetry of her characters’ speech, Hansberry reveals information about them and adds depth to her drama. With the Younger family, she presents three generations of people with individual speech patterns, musical tastes, and religious beliefs. Yet all are survivors in an oppressive environment trying to make a better future for themselves. The language used for the different characters, black and white, are so accurate that they add authenticity, credibility, and a sense of realism. The variety of speech patterns for the characters reflects the variety of education, social level, interest, opinions, and awareness of oppression. It depicts the breadth of African-American culture. For example, the wisdom in Mama’s speech to Beneatha after Walter Lee has lost her medical school tuition in his bad business scheme is accentuated by Hansberry’s use of rhythm, repetition, and metaphor:

Have you cried for that boy today? I don’t mean for yourself and your family ’cause we lost the money. I mean for him; what he been through and what it done to him. Child, when do you think is the time to love somebody the most; when they done good and made things easy for everybody? Well, then you ain’t done learning— because that ain’t the time at all. It’s when he’s at his lowest point and can’t believe in hisself ’cause the world done whipped him so. When you start to measure somebody, measure him right, child, measure him right. Make sure you done taken into account what hills and valleys he come through before he got to wherever he is. (135-136)

While most of the dialogue in the play realistically ranges from Mama’s southern-influenced dialect to Joseph Asagai’s African colonial speech patterns, there is one expressionistic section. In the scene when Walter Lee returns home drunk and finds Beneatha dressed in a traditional Nigerian robe and performing a dance of welcome to recorded Nigerian music, he is drawn into the ritual himself, posturing as an African warlord, a man he might have been in a different country at a different time, saying: “Listen my black brothers. . . . Do you hear the screeching of the cocks in yonder hills beyond where the chiefs meet in council for the coming of the mighty war. . . . Do you hear the singing of the women, singing the war songs of our fathers to the babies in the great houses . . . singing the sweet war songs? OH, DO YOU HEAR, MY BLACK BROTHERS!” (69-70).

Through Walter Lee’s poetic speech and Beneatha’s interest in her African heritage Hansberry expresses her pan-Africanism on stage and suggests the importance of understanding one’s heritage. Hansberry makes clear that African history is every bit as important to the Youngers and all African Americans as is European history to many European-Americans.

In contrast, when Walter Lee is considering sacrificing his integrity by selling the house back to Mr. Lindner, his speech and actions mimic those of the degrading American minstrel show of mid-1800s to early 1900s: “Captain, Mistuh, Bossman. A-hee-hee- hee! Yasssssuh! Great White Father, just gi’ ussen de money, fo’ God’s sake, and we’s ain’t gwine come out deh and dirty up yo’ white folks neighborhood.” (134). In this scene Walter Lee’s character hits an alltime low and his dialogue reflects his desperation.

In addition to dialect, Hansberry uses music throughout the play to explore, define, and encourage her characters. Jazz, blues, spirituals, and African tribal music are interjected throughout the play. At one scene’s conclusion, when Mama feels down, she asks Ruth to sing her a spiritual, “Sing that ‘No Ways Tired.’” That song always lifts me up so—” (38). Walter Lee finds relief from the stress in his life at the Green Hat, a little jazz bar: “You know what I like about the Green Hat? I like this little cat they got here who blows the sax . . . he’s all music” (93). And a rare scene of tenderness between Ruth and Walter Lee depicts them slow dancing to a blues record.

A Raisin in the Sun has earned its place as a hallmark of American drama like that of Arthur Miller’s contemporaneous play Death of a Salesman. By exploring diversity and universal themes, presenting a variety of personal relationships and human aspirations, celebrating black music, history, and culture through the black perspective and black experience, Hansberry created a work of art that is as relevant today as it was almost 50 years ago. The central truth of the play that every individual must make his or her own life still speaks to audiences today: “What lifts the play, ultimately, into art of a high order is Hansberry’s ability to set our imaginations on fire about the extraordinariness of ordinary people, and therefore of ourselves” (Carter 260).

For Discussion or Writing
1. A Raisin in the Sun is a classic American drama and as such it has been compared to Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman, both of which are family-centered dramas that deal with American identity and American culture. Thinking about both families and the central issues each play explores, write a well-developed essay that compares and contrasts the two plays.

2. How does Hansberry’s use of language help identity and “deepen” her characters? Examine the differences in the dialects of Mama Younger, Walter Lee, Beneatha, and Joseph Asagai. How does their language inform the audience about their character?

3. Mama’s plant is a powerful symbol in the play. What is its significance to Mama, to Ruth, and to the play as a whole?

4. It is very important to Beneatha to get in touch with her African roots. Many critics have suggested that her character is loosely based on Hansberry. On the basis of your knowledge of Hansberry’s life, trace the autobiographical elements in the play and then write a persuasive essay that explores those connections. Be sure to indicate, in terms of your research, whether you believe Beneatha’s voice speaks for Hansberry or not, qualifying every statement with details from the play and documented details from Hansberry’s life.

5. Despite the threat of moving, the family seems upbeat at the end of the play. Considering that Hansberry herself was a victim of violence during integration, write an essay that accounts for the tone at the end of the play.