A Raisin in the Sun by Lorraine Hansberry

Walter Lee is a chauffeur and Lena's son, still living at home in Mama's crowded apartment. He is a slim, intense, thirty-five-year-old black man. Walter believes wealth to be the answer to his feelings of desperation and hopelessness as a slum resident and employee in a dead-end job. He has contempt for the women in his family, who, he thinks, do not support his aspiration to break from his working- class life to become a prosperous businessman. In such a prestigious position, Walter believes, he can finally assume his mother's role as the head of the family and have the means to leave an admirable legacy to his son. To realize his dream, he wants to use the insurance money to invest in a liquor store with two of his friends (Ward, 223).

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. 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 (Ward, 224).

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 realizes that he cannot accept the degradation he would bring upon himself, his family, and his father's memory by accepting the association's offer. Discovering his manhood and his responsibility to his family and his race, he refuses to sell back the house. When the association's representative appeals to Mama to reverse her son's decision, she poignantly and pridefully says, “I am afraid you don't ...