A Raisin in The Sun Review

A Raisin in the Sun
Walter Lee Younger - The protagonist of the play. Walter is a dreamer. He wants to be rich and devises plans to acquire wealth with his friends, particularly Willy Harris. When the play opens, he wants to invest his fathers insurance money in a new liquor store venture. He spends the rest of the play endlessly preoccupied with discovering a quick solution to his familys various problems. Beneatha Younger (Bennie) - Mamas daughter and Walters sister. Beneatha is an intellectual. Twenty years old, she attends college and is better educated than the rest of the Younger family. Some of her personal beliefs and views have distanced her from conservative Mama. She dreams of being a doctor and struggles to determine her identity as a well-educated black woman. Lena Younger (Mama) - Walter and Beneathas mother. The matriarch of the family, Mama is religious, moral, and maternal. She wants to use her husbands insurance money as a down payment on a house with a backyard to fulfill her dream for her family to move up in the world. Ruth Younger - Walters wife and Traviss mother. Ruth takes care of the Youngers small apartment. Her marriage to Walter has problems, but she hopes to rekindle their love. She is about thirty, but her weariness makes her seem older. Constantly fighting poverty and domestic troubles, she continues to be an emotionally strong woman. Her almost pessimistic pragmatism helps her to survive. Travis Younger - Walter and Ruths sheltered young son. Travis earns some money by carrying grocery bags and likes to play outside with other neighborhood children, but he has no bedroom and sleeps on the living-room sofa. Joseph Asagai - A Nigerian student in love with Beneatha. Asagai, as he is often called, is very proud of his African heritage, and Beneatha hopes to learn about her African heritage from him. He eventually proposes marriage to Beneatha and hopes she will return to Nigeria with him. George Murchison - A wealthy, African-American man who courts Beneatha. The Youngers approve of George, but Beneatha dislikes his willingness to submit to white culture and forget his African heritage. He challenges the thoughts and feelings of other black people through his arrogance and flair for intellectual competition. Mr. Karl Lindner - The only white character in the play. Mr. Lindner arrives at the Youngers apartment from the Clybourne Park Improvement Association. He offers the Youngers a deal to reconsider moving into his (all-white) neighborhood. Bobo - One of Walters partners in the liquor store plan. Bobo appears to be as mentally slow as his name indicates. Willy Harris - A friend of Walter and coordinator of the liquor store plan. Willy never appears onstage, which helps keep the focus of the story on the dynamics of the Younger family. Mrs. Johnson - The Youngers neighbor. Mrs. Johnson takes advantage of the Youngers hospitality and warns them about moving into a predominately white neighborhood.
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. The title of the play references a conjecture that Langston Hughes famously posed in a poem he wrote about dreams that were forgotten or put off. He wonders whether those dreams shrivel up like a raisin in the sun. Every member of the Younger family has a separate, individual dreamBeneatha wants to become a doctor, for example, and Walter wants to have money so that he can afford things for his family. The Youngers struggle to attain these dreams throughout the play, and much of their happiness and depression is directly related to their attainment of, or failure to attain, these 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. The Need to Fight Racial Discrimination
The character of Mr. Lindner makes the theme of racial discrimination prominent in the plot as an issue that the Youngers cannot avoid. The governing body of the Youngers new neighborhood, the Clybourne Park Improvement Association, sends Mr. Lindner to persuade them not to move into the all-white Clybourne Park neighborhood. Mr. Lindner and the people he represents can only see the color of the Younger familys skin, and his offer to bribe the Youngers to keep them from moving threatens to tear apart the Younger family and the values for which it stands. Ultimately, the Youngers respond to this discrimination with defiance and strength. The play powerfully demonstrates that the way to deal with discrimination is to stand up to it and reassert ones dignity in the face of it rather than allow it to pass unchecked. 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. Walter and Beneatha learn this lesson about family at the end of the play, when Walter must deal with the loss of the stolen insurance money and Beneatha denies Walter as a brother. Even facing such trauma, they come together to reject Mr. Lindners racist overtures. 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 familys wishes before their own, they merge their individual dreams with the familys overarching dream.

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