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An Analysis Of Hansberry's A Raisin In The Sun

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Hansberry's Raisin in the Sun is set in a one-bedroom apartment shared by three generations of the Younger family: Walter and Ruth, their son Travis, Walter’s sister Beneatha, and their mother Lena.

The Younger family is waiting for a $10,000 life insurance check resulting from the father’s recent death. The windfall represents a kind of liberation to the family with the central conflict over how to spend the money. Mama (Lena) puts down a payment on a house in an all-white neighborhood (Clybourne Park), while Walter wants to invest in a liquor store. Mama relents, with the condition that they carve out $3,000 for Beneatha’s college education.

On moving day, a chance to make up for the lost money comes when a white representative offers the family a sum of money to prevent them from integrating a white neighborhood. Walter kicks …show more content…

Centered around a total of 10 leading and featured roles for African-American actors, A Raisin in the Sun made its Broadway debut on March 11, 1959. Up until then, there had only been 10 dramas authored by black playwrights (all men) and only one, Langston Hughes' Mulatto, lasted a year.

Hansberry's Broadway production starred Sidney Poitier and quickly became a hot ticket, running over 500 performances. Touring and international productions followed and a film version was released in 1961 (with the screenplay written by Hansberry — at her insistence — as part of the stipulations of selling the film rights).

The play was nominated for four Tony awards and was named the “best play” by the New York Drama Critics' Circle, making Hansberry the first African-American and youngest person to win the

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A Raisin in the Sun by Lorraine Hansberry is a play which contains many different obstacles that the characters face. One character, Beneatha, faces an obstacle that is out of her control. This obstacle is gender inequality. Throughout A Raisin in the Sun, gender inequality is experienced by Beneatha and reflects the struggles women faced in the 1950s. One of the issues that Beneatha faces in the play is her relationships with two men in her life, George Murchison and Joseph Asagai.

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A Raisin in the Sun is a play, which consists of three acts for a total of six scenes. From the very beginning, the plot line begins with the Younger family waking up, going about their morning as they normally do. The family living in the small apartment consists of Mama, Beneatha, her daughter, Walter, her son, Ruth, Walter’s wife, and Travis, Walter and Ruth’s son. The apartment that accommodates this family consists of a small kitchen, containing one small window, a living room, which also serves as Travis’ room, and two bedrooms, one for Walter and Ruth, the other shared by Mama and Beneatha. In the kitchen window lays a potted plant, second to only family in Mama’s most prized possessions.

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When Walter Lee’s father, Big Walter dies, the family receives a $10,000 life insurance check and with that money the Younger’s move into Clybourne Park, a white neighborhood, Lorraine Hansberry’s family also moved into a white neighborhood, Washington Park, on 6140 S. Rhodes Avenue; Hansberry could have possibly had this in mind while writing this story. Lorraine Hansberry was well off financially for African Americans at the time, let alone all races during the great depression, so she never really got a feel for what living poor was like but Hansberry did see many poor children and this could be a factor for writing the play about the Younger family with their many financial struggles, like not even being able to have their own shower ; she

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In the play Raisin in the Sun written by Lorraine Hansberry takes place on the southside of Chicago where Walter and his family are racially profiled and show us how the survive throughout their struggles. The central struggles for the younger family in their search for the American dream is mostly poverty and being racially profiled against for their actions. Hansberry challenges the traditional gender roles and issues of dominance throughout the play when Mama gives Walter lee the rest of the money at the end of the play. He becomes all excited and was supposed to save some for himself and put the rest of the money to Beneatha 's education. Instead, he gave all that money to Willy another character in the play which later on that he stole from him.

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The Youngers defy the naysayers by taking their place as typical Americans. Though comfortably middle class, Hansberry’s own family mirrors the Youngers. When Hansberry

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