Through characters, settings, and details, Lorraine Hansberry accurately portrays the 1960s and it's racist and sexist attitudes towards men and women in A Raisin in the Sun. To begin, A Raisin in the Sun focuses on a family that struggles with racial discrimination along with financial instability. With this in mind, the Younger family receives a 10,000 dollar check that causes conflict within the home. During this novel, Hansberry comments on the American dream during the 1950s and 1960s and how race and gender may play a role with decision making().
To begin, Hansberry uses multiple settings to emphasize the living struggles that many African American families faced during this period. Since the novel takes places in Chicago during the 1950s,
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For instance, Ruth says “ We've put enough in this rat trap to pay for four houses by now,” which shows that much of the money the family made was not only going to rent expenses but to home upkeep” (31) Interestingly enough, writer, Tayebeh Norouzi, suggest that the infestation of rats and cockroaches are representative of the separation between races and the racism that exist in the minds of white Americans during this time. One example he cites from Hansberry is when Travis kills a rat the size “of a cat” (Nowrouzi 56). With these rats, roaches, and other disgusting attributes in mind, Nowrouzi makes the correlation to how society and the political atmosphere did nothing to fix or “clean up” the mess caused by the war on races (Nowrouzi 57). Ultimately, these comments are most likely correct because Hansberry is trying to comment on how society uses race as a way to discredit people and leave them with no other option. Now knowing this information, it's easier to see how small comments throughout A Raisin in the Sun, such as “spraying insecticide into the cracks of the wall,” can have a more impactful meaning once taking into consideration the ugly truth of the