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Personal growth and personal struggles in the black family are the primary topics covered in Lorraine Hansberry’s 1957 play A Raisin in the Sun, inspired by Langston Hughes’s poem, published in 1951 titled “Harlem (A Dream Deferred).” The story follows the Younger family, living in “Chicago’s Southside, sometime between World War II and the present” (Hansberry 1437). The Younger family consists of Mama, her children Walter Lee and Beneatha, Walter’s Wife, Ruth, and their son. The entire family is crammed in an apartment, meagerly furnished in Chicago’s black metropolis. Issues that afflicted black families during that time were their migration from the South, poverty, civil rights, identity, and opportunities that were not afforded them in the South. A Raisin in the Sun shows these struggles and how the family falls and rises through them together. This play is of particular significance as it was written during tumultuous times for blacks, regardless of living in the South or the larger cities. It was the first play written by an African American woman that was ever produced on Broadway, who experienced discrimination worse than the Youngers. It was a time when many blacks fled the “Jim Crow” South to come north hoping for opportunities to find better employment, housing situations, and dignity.
At the time the Younger family would have been in the city, Chicago, in the 1920s, developed a report on race relations in the city. Blacks from the South were asked “What do you like about the North?” their responses were noted to be similar “1) Freedom in voting & conditions of colored people here. 2) Freedom and chance to make a living; privileges. 3) Freedom and opportunity to acquire something.” (Hansberry 1448). This play addresses realistic issues and Hansberry portrays the mindset and development of the Younger children, Walter Lee and Beneatha. Hansberry illustrates that although Walter Lee and Beneatha are of the same parents, live in the same household, and in the same community, their journey toward self-discovery is different, mostly due to race & gender roles assigned to both during that time.
Beneatha and Walter were raised by proud parents who moved to Chicago just two weeks after getting married. They had dreams of moving up in life, Mama recalls her plans of homeownership “wasn’t planning on living here no more than a year. . . We were going to set away, little by little,” “Child, you should know all the dreams I had about buying that house. . . and making me a little garden in the back” (Hansberry 1469) However, like most, their dreams were deferred. There is an opportunity for Mama to reclaim her dream and buy a house for her family as well as finally having a garden. Big Walter, Walter and Beneatha’s father has passed, and the family is waiting on a $10,000 check from the insurance company. Each family member has a clashing vision, a dream, of what they could do with that money and how they could do it.
Walter Lee has his eyes set fast on the $10,000 to open a liquor store. Walter Lee’s plan conflicts with Mama’s of buying the family a home with space that is so desperately needed in light of their cramped living situation. Walter Lee’s vision is not a bad one, because he plans to gain wealth so that the family can be comfortable. Walter Lee is a chauffeur for a rich white man and sees firsthand the things that wealth brings. Being a poor black man working for a rich white man stirs up all types of emotions in Walter Lee, from anger to sadness to envy. It motivates him to have the desire to use the $10,000 to invest in a liquor store but does not motivate or allow him to realize that dream on his own. Walter remembers a time when the dry cleaner asked him to invest in the business “When he wanted me to go in the dry-cleaning business with him. And now –he’s grossing a hundred thousand a year. A hundred thousand dollars a year!” (Hansberry 1462) so this $10,000 represents Walter’s dream deferred. As noted, this is not Mama’s dream for the money and Mama is ultimately in control of the money. Walter feels defeated, His mother, his wife, and his son are ecstatic about the notion of a house in the suburbs and leaving the inner city. “Man says to his woman: I got me a dream. His woman says: Eat your eggs. Man says: I got to take hold of this here world, baby! And a woman will say: Eat your eggs and go to work. Man says: I got to change my life, I’m choking to death, baby! And his woman say -Your eggs are getting cold!” Walter is trying to convey to the family that he is suffocating but they are not hearing him.
Walter is a hard worker but not necessarily a go-getter, he has a dream to spend the insurance money but no solutions as to how he can acquire this on his own. Hansberry shows he is not necessarily good with money. He has a wife and child but seems to rely on his parents for support. Walter Lee does not find any peace in this world that does not include him. Walter will have to take a journey and dig deep within to find the solutions to his problems. The obstacles Walter Lee faces as a black man are tremendous; the odds are not stacked in his favor. He sees the American Dream through his employer and the world around him amid civil rights controversies, so that dream seems impossible to reach until the emergence of the insurance check. The Poem from which this play is inspired “What happens to a dream deferred? Does it dry up; like a raisin in the sun?” (Hughes line) demonstrates where Walter Lee starts his journey, from boyhood to manhood. His hope is drying up like a raisin in the sun, along with his aspirations. Critic Douglas Turner Ward writes “Consequently, when Hansberry selects the “raisin” phrase she limits the thematic relevance of Hughes’ poem to her play; her themes are concerned, not so much with a fulfilled faith in inevitable changes for the better, but with the drying up of dreams.” (Ward, ‘Lorraine Hansberry and the Passion of Walter Lee.’)
Walter’s reaction to having his dream deferred -Mama putting a deposit on a home in a white racist suburb – leaves him hurt and angry. Walters’s pregnant wife is overjoyed. Her decision to possibly abort the baby because of their desperate financial situation can be put on hold with the notion of living in a new home with actual space for her and her family. When Walter hears of this he is enraged and hurt. In his mind, his manhood is questioned. He desires to be the man of the house in the absence of his father. Mama tries to reason with Walter letting him know that she has everyone’s best interest at heart. “I – I saw my family falling apart today . . . I wish you say something, son . . .I wish you’d say how deep inside you you think I done the right thing -” (Hansberry 1494) Walter, in his immaturity, doesn’t see that is the right thing for the family as a whole, so this decision causes him to spiral downward; he is not going to work and drinking heavily. It shows that the thing that he wants most, which is the responsibility of being the man of the house he is not capable of or at least not ready for. Walter has resentment toward the women in his life. (()) writes as he is resentful and burdened by the economic pressures and white supremacist structure. “You the head of this family. You run our lives like you want to” (80).
Mama, seeing Walter Lee spiral, feels a sense of guilt “I been wrong son. That I been doing to you what the rest of the world been doing to you.” and she decides to take a leap of faith “There ain’t nothing worth holding on to, money, dreams, nothing else –if it means—if it means it’s going to destroy my boy.” So Mama puts the family fortune in Walter Lee’s hand. “… take three thousand dollars and put it in a savings account for Beneatha’s medical schooling. The rest . . from now on any penny that comes out of it or that goes in it is for you to look after. For you to decide. . .” Walter now has total autonomy to handle the remaining money that’s left after the deposit on the house. Mama tells him that he is the Man of the house.
This begins to change Walter’s disposition; it reaffirms his hopes, manhood, and dignity. He begins to show more affection to all three women in his household; he takes his wife to the movies, shows her affection, gives a gift to his mother, and teases Beneatha about her idealism. As critic (()) writes “Walter Lee’s ability to alter his behavior after gaining the money clearly shows the extent to which he has been influenced by financial pressures.” That joy is short-lived and Hansberry takes this character to what many believe is the transition in his life that ultimately softens and changes him.
Walter Lee decides to invest money into the liquor store he has been dreaming about along with a friend named BoBo and a shady character named Willy. Walters’s world dries up like a raisin in the sun when he hears from BoBo that Willy has run away with the money. At this point, his dreams and the dreams of his family “sag; like a heavy load.” As Langston Hughes suggests in his poem “Harlem” “Or does it explode?” Walter Lee retreats to a dark isolation, not only did he spend the money he was in charge of but Beneatha’s medical school money as well. At the end of the play, Mr. Linder representing the whites of the new neighborhood offers to buy the house at a profit to keep the Younger family out of their white neighborhood. Critic Steven R. Carter sums it up nicely in his essay “Images of Men in Lorraine Hansberry’s Writing” “Walter Lee realizes that he can accept this money only at the expense of his respect for himself, his family, and his race, and he finally concedes his family’s importance to him. He learns that his pride in himself and his pride in his family are inseparable, that anything harming one also harms the other, and he further sees that the three women in his life have always helped him bear the burdens of living in a racist system and are now prepared to be powerful allies in the struggle against this new racist insult, despite the implicit threat of harm which comes from not accepting it.”
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