A Raisin in the Sun Response
A Raisin in the Sun by Lorraine Hansberry is a tribute and endeavour on the author’s part to write about instances, creating realistic portraits of African-American life. Set in south-side Chicago, it is a play that powerfully addresses so many issues relevant to the African-American experience in the 1950s – a massive precursor to what eventually became the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s. A Raisin in the Sun, I would like to argue, is the portrayal and characterisation of the unrest that arose amongst Black people, as they were forced to be content with their inferior status, in pre-Civil Rights America. This idea is presented as a stark contrast by the author’s two, central characters: Walter and Mama Younger. Mama is content with the money she is getting from her husband’s life insurance and the house she buys with it in an all-White neighbourhood, not wanting anything more. This is intended by Hansberry to represent the views of an entire, older generation of African-Americans, who were just happy in their marginal place in American society, thinking about this oppression as some sort of privilege they were being entitled to, or were just too scared to speak up. On the other hand, Walter is representative of the new era of Black-American, who isn’t content with his place in the society in which he exists in, and wants to be better off, earning more money through his investment, living in a better house and having a better life. This inherent generational and aspirational rift is a key struggle that the author tries to highlight, where the Black identity comes into question and the real place and position of the race too. The second contrast that is made to resemble two opposite ends of a spectrum through the two characters of George Murchison, who is described to be a “fully assimilated Black man” as he is educated and has been charged to have disowned his African heritage and Joseph Asagai, a man who teaches, Beneatha (Walter’s sister) about her African ways and urges her not to assimilate to “White ways.” This spectrum is representative of the different ways Black people are made to define their own existence in a predominantly and powerful White society, either by conforming to the “norm” or vehemently and constantly being in protest against it. Therefore, playing on these kind of dynamics and positioning them in an individualistic narrative constructed on social issues, Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun has carved its place in literature as an honest and inspiring drama about the condition of Black-Americans before the Civil Rights Movement.
What I found to be the most appealing was the title of the play, taken from the famous Langston Hughes’s poem, which so wonderfully captures the tonal essence of this work:
“What happens to a dream deferred?
Does it dry up
Like a raisin in the sun?”
A Raisin in the Sun was a fascinating reading experience for me as I found the author’s voice to be so uniquely honest and serene as she lay the words down to her ingeniously written narrative. The emotions in her words transcended the pages and it becomes a deeply emotional, empathetic and sympathetic experience for any reader.