A Raisin in the Sun An American Drama Lorraine Hansberry

Grew up on Chicago’s south side as the youngest of four children Her father was a successful business man and her family was wealthy by the standards of her neighborhood.

Lorraine Hansberry Hansberry was educated in Chicago’s public schools and showed an early talent for both writing and drawing. She later attended the University of Wisconsin and the Art Institute of New York.

Lorraine Hansberry From high school on into her later life, Lorraine wrote plays and short stories. Her first piece of writing to receive recognition was A Raisin in the Sun. It opened in 1959 and was an instant success.

Lorraine Hansberry Hansberry continued to write plays after A Raisin in the Sun. Her second Broadway play, The Sign in Sidney Brustein’s Window, opened just three weeks before she died of cancer, at the age of 34.

Lorraine Hansberry To Be Young, Gifted, and Black, a collection of letters, journal entries, speeches, and play excerpts, was published in This was the culmination of a very promising, but shortened, career.

A Raisin in the Sun A Raisin in the Sun opened on Broadway in 1959 to instant success. This play marked the beginning of a vigorous black theater movement. This became one of the most vital forces in the modern American theater.

A Raisin in the Sun A Raisin in the Sun won the New York Drama Critics’ Circle Award. At 29, Lorraine Hansberry became the youngest person and the first African American playwright ever to win this award.

1950s The 1950s, when A Raisin in the Sun was produced, were a time of overall peace and prosperity in America. However, it was also a time of developing racial tension as African Americans began to assert their right to equality.

1950s The growing memberships in organizations such as the NAACP demonstrated the unifying forces of African Americans that eventually allowed the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s to take place.

1950s African American families, such as Lorraine Hansberry’s family, began moving into white suburbs in order to create more opportunities for their families and to stress the importance of equality and the end of segregation. These families were not welcomed in white communities and often suffered unjust retaliations from their neighbors.

A Raisin in the Sun Themes in the Drama

Themes The Value and Purpose of Dreams A Raisin in the Sun is essentially about dreams, as the main characters struggle to deal with the oppressive circumstances that rule their lives. Every member of the Younger family has a separate, individual dream—

Themes The Value and Purpose of Dreams By the end of the play, they learn that the dream of a house is the most important dream because it unites the family.

Themes The Need to Fight Racial Discrimination The play powerfully demonstrates that the way to deal with discrimination is to stand up to it and reassert one’s dignity in the face of it rather than allow it to pass unchecked.

Themes The Importance of Family The Youngers struggle socially and economically throughout the play but unite in the end to realize their dream of buying a house. Mama strongly believes in the importance of family, and she tries to teach this value to her family as she struggles to keep them together and functioning.

Themes The Importance of Family Throughout the events of the drama the family members realize that they are still strong individuals, but they are now individuals who function as part of a family. When they begin to put the family and the family’s wishes before their own, they merge their individual dreams with the family’s overarching dream.

A Raisin in the Sun Act 1 Notes

Literary Elements Conflict Conflict is the struggle between opposing forces or characters. A conflict can be either internal, involving opposing forces within a person’s mind, or external, involving outside forces in the form of other people, nature, or an entire society.

Symbols “Eat Your Eggs” Walter employs this phrase from early in the drama to illustrate how women keep men from achieving their goals—every time a man gets excited about something, he claims, a woman tries to temper his enthusiasm by telling him to eat his eggs.

Symbols “Eat Your Eggs” Being quiet and eating one’s eggs represents an acceptance of the adversity that Walter and the rest of the Youngers face in life.

Symbols “Eat Your Eggs” Walter believes that Ruth, who is making his eggs, keeps him from achieving his dream, and he argues that she should be more supportive of him. The eggs she makes every day symbolize her mechanical approach to supporting him.

A Raisin in the Sun Act 2 Notes

Literary Elements Characterization Characterization is the process by which a writer breathes life into a character and reveals his or her personality.

Symbols Beneatha’s Hair When the play begins, Beneatha has straightened hair. Midway through the play, after Asagai visits her and questions her hairstyle, she cuts her Caucasian- seeming hair. Her new, radical afro represents her embracing of her heritage.

Symbols Beneatha’s Hair Beneatha’s cutting of her hair is a very powerful social statement, as she symbolically declares that natural is beautiful, prefiguring the 1960s cultural credo that black is beautiful.

Symbols Beneatha’s Hair Rather than force her hair to conform to the style society dictates, Beneatha opts for a style that enables her to more easily reconcile her identity and her culture. Beneatha’s new hair is a symbol of her anti-assimilationist beliefs as well as her desire to shape her identity by looking back to her roots in Africa.

A Raisin in the Sun Act 3 Notes

Literary Elements Characters A dynamic character changes in some important way as a result of a story’s action. A static character stays the same during the course of a story

Symbols Mama’s Plant The most overt symbol in the play, Mama’s plant represents both Mama’s care and her dream for her family. In her first appearance onstage, she moves directly toward the plant to take care of it.

Symbols Mama’s Plant Her care for her plant is similar to her care for her children, unconditional and unending despite a less-than-perfect environment for growth.

Symbols Mama’s Plant The plant also symbolizes her dream to own a house and, more specifically, to have a garden and a yard. With her plant, she practices her gardening skills.

Symbols Mama’s Plant Her success with the plant helps her believe that she would be successful as a gardener. Her persistence and dedication to the plant fosters her hope that her dream may come true.