Analyzing A Raisin in the Sun

In A Raisin in the Sun, Lorraine Hansberry relates the plight of the African-American to a vast and varied audience using dreams as a device- a conduit through which she can translate her message into a universally understandable story which any human being can understand. Hansberry depicts a distinctly black family and introduces characters whose race and individual culture remain evident throughout the entire play, but race is not the subject matter of the play, indeed it only goes skin deep, as Hansberry has much to say on the subject of the ripe and juicy futures we imagine in our dreams and the cold, shriveled existences we typically wind up carving out for ourselves. While race is a factor in the troubles and hardships of the Younger family, we can clearly see ourselves as White, Indian, Hispanic, Native American, Polish, Jewish, or Purple-Polka-Dotted members of the Younger family, inhibited if not by race than by any other number of factors which would dry up our dreams.

Hansberry does not make much use of imaginative or dream-like imagery in A Raisin in the Sun, instead she uses overt word-imagery and negative connotations to highlight hidden undertones and means which if one looks carefully, seem almost clear as day. For instance, the character Beneatha Younger, whose name obviously underscores her social class and "destined" subservient role in live, actually aspires to be a doctor- a member in highest regard of one of society's oldest and most time honored institutions, medicine. At times in the play Beneatha takes a step back, socially, and accepts a subservient or at least secondary role to culture (in the case of Asagai), or in the family (as in the case with Walther)- despite her desires to rise and come into her own and be free of the ghetto "petit bourgeois noir" and "assimilationist" identity. At the same time, Hansberry invokes the religious connotations of the name Ruth (Ruth, or 'rut' is Hebrew for compassion) in her character. In the bible, Ruth pledges her loyalty to her mother-in-law, Elimelech's wife Naomi, and is rewarded for her troubles following her husband's death. Likewise Hansberry's Ruth is loyal to Mama, and wants to make it clear to Walther that Mama's money is her own, the wealth she inherited from her husband's death. In this way Mama is like Naomi, collecting the value of her husband's life following his death- but doing so in a way that does not seem malicious or greedy, but with what almost seems like disinterest in the wealth. In fact, Mama's apparent disinterest in the wealth (in the beginning of the play) seems to foreshadow her understanding (we can imagine because of advanced age) of what emotional tumults it will put the family through.

By Act II we can all identity who each character is on the surface- that is to say, we can place them in our everyday lives and understand who they are and why they do the things they do. We've seen their everyday aspirations and come to understand their dreams; as different as we may however be from them, in Act II (once we've identified with them) we can begin to see the true nature of the play; we begin to become reflective as we see how hard life is for the Younger family, and draw parallels between what we can conceivably call their 'unattainable dreams' and our own. If it weren't a widely foreshadowed and spoken-of even in the play, Mama's check might seem like an old Agatha Christie deus ex machina of the worst variety. Suddenly the item arrives through which each person could individually make their dreams manifest in reality. And like King Arthur fatefully placed his trust in Lancelot and not the boy Galahad, Mama eventually entrusts the money to Walter instead of the boy Travis, or even Ruth or Beneatha. And again in the way of King Arthur this leads to great tragedy.

It is the greatest and most passionate desire of Walter to open his own liquor store; to buy into it with money Mama receives and begin getting huge returns on his investment immediately. As we have gotten to know Walter we see that he is reminiscent of Strindberg's Jean from Miss Julie, Walter is a valet with his own goals in life who does not want to sit nestled in the grass and roots of the tree stump, but would much rather scale the tree, if only to see what life is like from half-way between the muck and the canopy. Walter has grown restless living in the ghetto after the death of his father, his wife and family can no longer even relate to him, and it is apparent for all to see that what Walter craves most is change, and without it he will either lose his mind trapped in that small apartment, or he will run away. When he is entrusted with the money Walter makes the fateful choice to invest it into the liquor store anyway- whether this is a sign of the lack of respect his character has for others, or of his sheer desperation, the strength of his desire to escape the ghetto, is debatable. When the audience learns of his actions it seems, as if for a split second, Walter could become either the unexpected hero of the play or the predictable ass, but we are quickly reminded of his character's nature, and there can be no doubt that he is the ass. Walter lost the money, but whether or not that is a negative thing is again debatable. When Walter lost the money he was very suddenly enabled and given the capacity to mature and come into his own- despite the lack of money and original willingness to yield to Mr. Lindner, Walter comes into his own and stands up for what he believes and for the dreams of his mother; thereby almost earning the right to realize his dream of a change. It is not the dream he would have made manifest with the money, it is not bountiful and it will be hard, but for him the raisin is good enough.

The dreams and aspirations of Beneatha are a mystery (even to herself) for a large portion of the play, and are arguable following the final act. Clearly Beneatha aspires to be more than beneath it all, and Asagai's nickname for her seems more than appropriate- she craves much more than a shallow existence in a ghetto could ever giver her, but like Ruth she is loyal to Mama and Mama's desires for the money. Beneatha has very little regard for her brother, whom she still considers to be a man-child with unrealistic dreams who flies off on tirades and tangents whenever he pleases and always bites off more than he can chew. In retrospect it is easy to see that Beneatha's aspirations of going to medical school are no less likely than Walter's liquor store ambitions to succeed, and to Mama's Naomi, Beneatha would be Orpah, the sister who eventually left Naomi and Ruth's sides to return home to her roots at Naomi's request. However Beneatha is unsure of her cultural identity, and Asagai seems much too ready to thrust upon her the character of a Nigerian woman. As Asagai gets to know Beneatha a little better we see that her fascination with medicine actually comes from a fascination with the ability of one person to 'fix' another person, and return them to health and normality. This implies some sort of tragedy to Beneatha's character beyond her childhood incident which she described- she almost seems to imply that she would be in awe of a person who could move her and her family out of the ghetto, or could restore to Beneatha her cultural identity and individuality. And while medical school (or at least the possibility of Beneatha becoming a doctor) is mentioned at the end of the play, it is given a note of uncertainty, because like Walter, Beneatha also gets not what she wants, but what she needs. In Walter, her brother, she has found the man who will rise up and fix her family, pulling them out of the ghetto and saving them from becoming trapped there, and in Asagai she has found a man who can show her who she is and potentially support her through medical school. The air of uncertainty attached to Beneatha's future however, comes from the naturally associated costs of realizing your dreams. Either Beneatha will live with her family and not go to medical school, or she will leave with Asagai and not get to experience the prosperity her family is coming into.

By far one of the most tragic characters is Mama, whose misplaced confidence nearly cost her all she had. Like King Arthur she misplaced her confidence and was not betrayed out of malice but simply out of the nature of the character of Walter, who is her metaphorical Lancelot. Again, as we are hitting upon a recurring theme with Hansberry, Mama has her ideas of what she wants, and trades them for what she needs- which winds up being more valuable in the end anyway. Mama's single desire is to be able to live in a nice house with her husband's money, a house, Walter says, that he earned 'brick by brick'. Mama's money gives her the right to buy whatever she wants, but instead of going to Europe or buying fancy clothes, Mama (a truly modest person if there ever was one) wants to spend her money modestly, using only what she needs to on herself to live comfortably, and then presumably using the rest to put Beneatha through medical school. However, like everyone else, Mama's dreams are not be, and her bountiful harvest dries up and leaves her stuck in the kitchen in the ghetto- a powerful woman, Mama cannot express her pain and anguish at the loss of her dreams because of her son's incompetence. Mama's only sin against fate was her misplaced trust in Walter, but for Hansberry that is enough to cost Mama her comfortable happiness (or maybe for Hansberry to vindictively show the harshness of reality through torturing poor Mama). And while she is ready to submit to Lindner to at least make her terrible existence in the ghetto somewhat more comfortable, the sudden metamorphosis of Walter shows us that her faith in her son was never misplaced, but perhaps poorly timed. As Walter comes into his own in the face of all bigotry and racism which has only added to his burden as a lower-class citizen Mama sits back in reverie (Hansberry's own word) witnessing her son soar into a tirade and decide for the whole house that they will move into Lindner's neighborhood regardless of the cost. Mama is going to get her household, and finally she has a son who has become a man and is more than ready to lead his family in finding not what he immaturely wants for himself to have, but what is best for all of them. Mama again, did not get her exact wish- but like Walter and Beneatha, her raisin is good enough for her to live with.

The line from the Langston Hughes poem chosen for the play title, A Raisin in the Sun¸ was by far the most appropriate choice for play title, as Hansberry, rather than paying homage to the poem seems to answer it. The poem asks what happens to dreams when they die- if they rot or spoil or shrivel up; and like A Raisin in the Sun the poem has a uniquely black artistic style to it, but is universal through the humanity of the condition of dreaming. There is no doubt that Hansberry understood the potential capacity of such an idea- that the concept of dreaming and hoping are so universal to both black and white, extremely poor and extremely wealthy, that there could be no way a person could watch the play and not, in some small way, be able to relate to the idea. I do not consider this necessarily a bad thing either; the recurrence of themes in the forms of art of different people whose message is not entirely dissimilar is a common occurrence. Like Langston Hughes, Hansberry wanted to tell a distinctly black story in a way that made it possible for everyone to relate to it- the story was distant enough for the audience to be thankful that they didn't have to face such hardships, and close enough so that the audience identified with every person in the play regardless of prejudices. This is by far one of the most important plays read this semester because of its modern importance to race, and because of its raw depictions of the potential harshness of reality which all people have dealt with at one time or another.