The Stampede

Issue date: 4/30/10 Section: Entertainment

Media Credit: Book Cover

Media Credit: Provided by Megg Rapp. Sophomore Megg Rapp.

The 1950s were filled with change, marking the birth of Women's Liberation and the Civil Rights Movement. Lorraine Hansberry's award-winning play, "A Raisin in the Sun," which debuted in 1959, embodies these movements.

"A Raisin in the Sun" tells the story of the Youngers, an African-American family living in Chicago, struggling to define themselves in the midst of a marginalizing culture.

The family knows they are to inherit $10,000 worth of insurance money from Mama Lena's deceased husband, and all the characters have their own ideas of how the money could fulfill their dreams.

For Mama Lena, the grandmother, this means having a home with her own garden. Walter Lee, the father, longs to free the family from its financial burdens. Ruth, the mother, dreams of raising their child, Travis, in a home where he does not have to sleep on the couch in the living room. And Beneatha, Walter's sister, struggles as an African-American woman studying to be a doctor in a society where women were supposed to "get married and be quiet."

Throughout the play, each character strives in his or her own way to escape from society's restraints and establish a satisfying sense of self. Upon deciding to use the money to move out of their shoddy apartment into a wealthier, predominantly white neighborhood, the Youngers are faced with obstinate discrimination from the families already living there.

Lorraine Hansberry uses humor, pathos and frustration to appeal to her audience. The arguments between Walter Lee and Beneatha are loaded with witty sarcasm.

The family experiences the tragic loss of thousands of dollars to a deceitful prospective coworker of Walter Lee's. They suffer through the frustrating racism of the white residents of the neighborhood they are moving into. Readers and viewers of the play are moved by the poignant humanity of Hansberry's characters; we see them at their best and worst moments.

The play's title derives from a poem called "Harlem" by Langston Hughes, a celebrated poet during the Harlem Renaissance. In this poem he asks: "What happens to a dream deferred? Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun?"

Hansberry uses Hughes's poem as an epigraph and concludes the play in a similar questioning manner. Though the Younger family courageously decides to move in the face of discouragement and discrimination, the audience is left wondering what will become of them.

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