Analysis Of Lorraine Hansburry's A Raisin In The Sun

Everybody had dreams and aspirations, however those things never always go as planned. This happens to the characters in the play, A Raisin in the Sun. The play was written by Lorraine Hansburry, and it was the first Broadway play written by an African American woman. In the play, the Younger family, a family of five, live in a small two-bedroom apartment in Chicago. Mama, Lena, is about to receive an insurance check from her husband's death in the mail and has to decide what she is going to do with it. The check is seen as a beacon of hope to change their family's lives and make it much easier. Lena's son, Walter, wants to use it to leave his old job as a chauffer for a white man and invest in a liquor store, while Lena's daughter, Beneatha, wants to use it to help pay for her education to become a doctor. In the end, Mama entrusts some money to Walter and decides to buy a house in a white neighborhood to better accommodate their family because Walter's son had been sleeping on the living room couch. Walter's wife, Ruth, also goes through her own problems when she learns that she is expecting another child in a household that is already having a hard time getting by. A Raisin in the Sun is a great play that encompasses many themes of the African American working class culture in the United States. The play goes over important themes such as family, dreams, gender, race, and suffering, and A Raisin in the Sun connects all these themes to each other some way or another.