Analysis of A Raisin in the Sun by Lorraine Hansberry

Overview of the Play

A Raisin in the Sun is a play by Lorraine Hansberry first performed in 1959. The play centers on a small Black family living in Chicago. The family is poor, but Mama has come into some money through an inheritance. Ruth is pregnant and considering an abortion. Walter is consumed by a get-rich-quick scheme. And little Travis, with his pluck and heart, reminds the audience why life is precious. The family ultimately comes together over the purchase of a house in a white neighborhood. A wealthy white neighbor offers to buy them out of the property, and Walter seriously considers accepting the offer — but in the end he chooses to remain with his family, setting aside his dreams of fast money.

The ending is hopeful because the family is no longer deferring its dream. They are now pursuing the American Dream of homeownership and family life. The title of the play comes from a line in Langston Hughes' poem "Harlem," which asks: "What happens to a dream deferred? / Does it dry up / Like a raisin in the sun?"

About the Author

Lorraine Hansberry was the first Black female playwright to have a play produced on Broadway — and that play was A Raisin in the Sun. Hansberry knew Langston Hughes personally; his poem became the direct inspiration for the play's title and central metaphor. Her family was prominent and received many notable visitors, yet they also experienced racial segregation firsthand, and that experience shaped the play's dramatic world. Hansberry died of cancer at the age of 34 and therefore did not have a long writing career.

Language in the Work

The language of the play is that of everyday Americans: simple, direct, unpretentious, and realistic. Hansberry has a sharp ear for how people actually speak, and that authenticity is reflected throughout the dialogue. The stage directions are equally clear and convey a precise sense of how the play is meant to be staged. For example, it is written that Travis is "asleep on the make-down bed at center" in the opening scene of the family living room — a detail carefully chosen to convey cramped living quarters (Hansberry 27).

The play also uses language to illustrate how the American Dream seems attainable to some and unattainable to others. For Walter, the Dream is only reachable through a windfall. He swings for a home run with his liquor store investment idea but ends up striking out, and it is only through Mama that the family has a chance to put a down payment on a home. Walter's language is somewhat dried up — like the raisin in the title — because he has nearly surrendered his dream. As Brown observes, the language of the play is ultimately "based on an acceptance of the dream ideal — spiritual and material fulfillment in America — and, simultaneously, on a realistic recognition of those (like Walter Younger) whose dreams, or hopes, have dried up" (240).

Mama, by contrast, has not allowed the dream to die. Her language is full of warmth and consistently focused on the good rather than the bad. This is why Washington writes that her vision "sets her at odds with her son Walter" (113). They perceive the world differently and speak from different emotional places — yet in the end they are speaking the same language, because they are both working toward the same bright dream.

Works Cited

Brown, Lloyd W. "Lorraine Hansberry as Ironist: A Reappraisal of A Raisin in the Sun." Journal of Black Studies 4.3 (1974): 237–247.

Hansberry, Lorraine. A Raisin in the Sun. 1959.

Matthews, Kristin L. "The Politics of 'Home' in Lorraine Hansberry's A Raisin in the Sun." Modern Drama 51.4 (2008): 556–578.

Washington, J. Charles. "A Raisin in the Sun Revisited." Black American Literature Forum 22.1. School of Education, Indiana State University, 1988.