A Raisin in the Sun

Thesis Statement

Raisin in the Sun reminds me of an incident in my life and of why I decided to go in Economics in the first place."

A Raisin in the Sun was the first play by an African American woman to be produced on Broadway. It enjoyed a successful run and won the New York Drama Critics Circle Award. It has been reproduced often at regional and university theaters since its first production in 1959.

Lorraine Hansberry's play confronts crucial issues that have faced African Americans: the fragmentation of the family, the black male's quest for manhood, and the problems of integration. A Raisin in the Sun is fundamentally a family drama. Lena, the family matriarch, is attempting to keep her family together in difficult circumstances. She is the family's moral center, urging her children to end their quarreling, accept their responsibilities, and love and support one another. That the Youngers pull together in the closing scenes is more a credit to Lena than to her spirited but sometimes inconsiderate children, Walter and Beneatha. By allowing Lena to play this central role in the Younger family, Hansberry asserts the importance of the mother figure in the African American family (Bennett, 226).

As the play unfolds, Hansberry explores issues of African American identity, pride, male-female relationships within the black family, and the problems of segregation. Mama makes a down payment on a house in a white neighborhood. Fearing that her exercise of authority will diminish her son's sense of masculine self-worth, and in spite of her opposition to buying a liquor store, she reminds Walter of his sister's right to some of the money for a college education and entrusts him with what is left of the money after the down payment (Cruse, 67). When he returns despairingly after losing all of it, he considers that the only way to recoup the loss is to humiliate himself and his family by making a deal with the Clybourne Park Association, a group of white homeowners who want to buy back the new home in order to keep their neighborhood white.

In a dramatic conclusion, the disillusioned Walter enacts the dilemma of the modern African American male. Trapped at the bottom of the economic ladder, he must again submit to matriarchal authority. Mama despairs at having to take control and wield the authority she knows is destroying her son's masculine identity. Walter finally ...