“A Raisin In The Sun” by Lorraine Hansberry

The family want to escape their current situation and this

impacts the whole play.

Disappointment/lost dreams/being understood/being trapped

Ruth: disappointment has already begun to hang in her face.
Walter: (to Ruth) just for a second it was-you looked real young again. It's gone
now-you look like yourself again.
Walter: (to Ruth) How come you always try to be so unpleasant?......you tired
ain’t you? Tired of everything. Me, the boy, the way we live-this beat-up hole.
Walter: I'm 35 years old. I've been married 11 years and I got a boy who sleeps
in the living room (very very quietly) and all I got to give him is stories about
how rich white people live.
Walter: nobody in this house is ever going to understand me.
__________________________

Mama shakes her head at the dissolved dream (when she and Big Walter got
married and their lives were ahead of them, only planning on living in the
apartment a year).
Mama: all the dreams I had about buying that house and fixing it up and making
me a little garden in the back.
Ruth: Yes, life can be a barrel of disappointments sometimes.
Mama: seems like God didn’t see fit to give the black man nothing but dreams-
but, he did give us children to make them dreams seem worthwhile (family
love, everything is for the children)
Mama: I always wanted me a garden…this plant is close as I ever got to having
one (plant is symbolic of a dream)
__________________________
Ruth has her fists clenched on her thighs and is fighting hard to suppress a
scream that seems to be rising in her…..Mama comments that “women gets
right depressed sometimes when they get her way (p.41)
__________________________
Beneatha wants to escape by discovering her true identity, she is delighted with
the robes Asagi brings her from Nigeria. She wriggles in them “as she thinks a
Nigerian woman might”. She is offended that Asagi comments she mutilates her
hair as an assimilationist act. She cuts all her hair off after that. In Rosie,
Kayleigh too tries to escape by going to her friend Daria’s house after school.
She wants a normal life where she can sit in her pyjamas in a warm home and
watch Gilmore girls. Unlike Beneatha, Kayleigh doesn’t have the freedom to be
and do what she wants, partially because she is younger but also because her
family’s situation won’t allow it. She cannot escape her reality whereas
Beneatha can at least try. Bennie tries to become a doctor, she can spend time
with who she wants. Both she and Kayleigh try to escape but Kayleigh has to
return to her family to continue the hunt for a home.
__________________________
Walter: WILL SOMEBODY PLEASE LISTEN TO ME TODAY! (p.50)
Walter’s desire to invest in a liquor store is his idea of escape. Without his
dreams being fulfilled and without being understood by his family he gets “tied
up in some kind of knot” and turns to drink. He says “I want so many things that
they are driving me kind of crazy”. His desire to escape his current life and to
achieve a different future frustrates him incredibly because all he can see is “a
big, looming, blank space-full of nothing” (p.53)
He is so bitter he verbally abuses George in a drunken stupor asking him “you
happy?-you contented son-of-a-bitch….bitter? Man I’m a volcano…Here I am a
giant-surrounded by ants!”(p.62)……compare this with JP’s calm nature.
__________________________

The purchase of the house signals a hope for escape. It is hampered somewhat
by being in Clybourne Park, a white neighbourhood, but Ruth is delighted.
“say goodbye to these God-damned cracking walls!-and these marching
roaches”-and this cramped little closet which ain’t now or never was no kitchen!
She is “exuberant, almost tearfully happy” and “laughs joyously”…and the
despair she felt about having another baby dissipates.
They are excited about the sunlight in the new house (hope)
Walter, however, is not excited. He is instead disappointed that he did not get
money for the liquor store. He skips work and spends his days carelessly at The
Green Hat. “you realise that don’t nothing matter worth a damn, but just being
there” (p.80)
The ultimate blow to the family’s hope is when Walter loses the money he
invested in the liquor store. The devastation is clear when he pounds the floor
with his fists and sobs wildly shouting “that money is made out of my father’s
flesh”. It impacts Mama greatly as she reflects on her husband “working and
working and working like somebody’s old horse…and you give it all away in a
day”. The house becomes filled with “profound disappointment”.
Mama is particularly effected “she is lost, vague, trying to catch hold, to make
some sense of her former command of the world, but it still eludes her”. This is
the impact of disappointment and loss of dreams. Rosie never had the luxury of
having a dream like Mama did but disappointment impacts them both.
However, disappointment follows Rosie at every turn whereas Mama
experiences a huge knock, so much so that she grapples with finding sense in
the world. Rosie, on the other hand, does not have time to get knocked. She has
to keep her energy and spirits up to find accommodation for her family and
when this fails it is about protecting her family as best she can while they spend
the night in their car. Both women are lost. Mama is stunned by the loss of
money that her husband slaved his life away for while Rosie sits in the car
looking anxiously out the window, pondering her family’s future. Both women,
as the matriarchs of the family, especially suffer great disappointment and
pressure.

Race/class-pride/limited opportunities/discrimination
Mama: we just plain working folks.
Ruth: Walter Lee say coloured people ain’t never going to start getting ahead
till they start gambling on some different kinds of things in the world.
They describe their house as a “rat trap” and a “beat-up” hole.
Beneatha: the only people in the world who are more snobbish than rich white
people are rich coloured people.
Beneatha: we’ve all got acute ghetto-itis.
__________________________
Mama (to Walter) Now here come you and Beneatha-talkin’ bout things we
ain’t never even thought about …you ain’t satisfied or proud of nothing we’ve
done (p.53) (Mama’s point is to simply to be good decent hard-working people
that cares for one’s family is enough, no need to be chasing dreams. Rosie,
certainly doesn’t have the luxury of chasing a dream).
__________________________
Beneatha tells Asagi “while I was sleeping in my bed things were happening in
the world that directly concerned me” (p.103). This highlights the hierarchy that
exists in their society. People in power “crooks and thieves and just plain idiots”
have the control and she is powerless to make any input herself because of her
race and class. This is similar to Rosie who confronts a wider societal problem
that is out of her control. Rules that govern the housing market are determined
by people in power who, we could also say, are “crooks and thieves and just
plain idiots” because they don’t care about the impact on working class families
such as Rosie’s. The Youngers and the Davis’ do not have much power in their
society to change their circumstances, but the Youngers are able to make more
of an effort towards gaining independence and freedom because they have
money on the way and Bennie is studying to become a doctor. While Rosie has
to focus on preventing her family from becoming homeless, the Youngers are
able to move slightly higher up in the world to a new house and a new life.
__________________________
Mama wants to maintain the family’s pride and dignity, much like Rosie does.
When Walter suggests accepting Mr. Lindner’s money Mama says “I come
from five generations of people who was slaves…..ain’t nobody in my family
never let nobody pay ‘em no money…we ain’t never been that poor…we ain’t
never been that dead inside”. Regardless of background and social class the
family have always maintained their dignity by working hard and taking pride
in being honest, industrious people. Unlike Walter who is willing to disregard
this, Rosie stands by her morals. She won’t “take back” whatever she said about
her father and won’t let her children into the house she grew up in if she can’t
go into the house either. Her family home seems like an easy solution to her
family’s crisis situation if she only took back what she said but, like Mama, it is
important to her to speak her truth and maintain her dignity. In a similar
manner, it would be an easy solution to take Mr. Lindner’s money but this
would mean sacrificing self-respect and allowing another force to exert power
and control over the family, a solution that neither Mama nor Rosie are willing
to consider. They both want to protect their family but not to the detriment of
the family’s dignity.
__________________________
Mr Linder aptly comments that “today everybody knows what it means to be on
the outside of something” (relevant to Rosie too) except that Mr. Linder doesn’t
have a clue what that experience is like. He pretends to be understanding and
compassionate but in reality discriminates against the Youngers by offering
them money not to move to Clybourne Park. No one helps Rosie either. Despite
ringing the hotels on the list give to her by Dublin City Council, they all turn
her away. Even when she rings the emergency line, she is told to go to her local
Garda station or call the rough sleeper’s number. Both families are limited by
being working class people with little access to suitable housing. They get no
support from anyone. The Youngers have the extra barrier of being
discriminated against because of the colour of their skin. They want to move but
Mr. Linder tries to stop them. We see the letting agent discriminate against JP
but this is because he has a family of four children, nothing to do with his race.
However, he is still prevented from gaining a nice family home because the
people in power won’t allow him. While both families rally against people who
are more powerful than them, it is only The Youngers who manage to escape.
They reject Mr. Lindner’s offer of money and move to their new house, despite
it being a white neighbourhood. They move with excitement, their pride and
relationships intact and in this way not only do they escape their cramped house,
they escape the constraints of discrimination and prejudice. Unfortunately, the
Davis family do not enjoy the same relief. They are left abandoned in their car
with nowhere to go, they are trapped by the housing crisis and barely no one
notices.

Marriage/relationships
Walter: A man needs for a woman to back him up….
Man say: I got me a dream. His woman say: eat your eggs…Man say: I got to
change my life, I’m choking to death, baby! And his woman say (in utter
anguish as he brings his fists down on his thighs) your eggs is getting cold”
__________________________
Power struggle/control: Walter gives Travis two fifty cents coins despite Ruth
saying they don’t have enough money. Ruth watches both of them with murder
in her eyes. Walter stands and stares back at her with defiance…..
Walter: pointing with pride “that’s my boy” Ruth looks at him in disgust.
__________________________
Ruth (to Mama): something is happening between Walter and me…he needs
something-something I can’t give him anymore.
__________________________
Ruth: (about George Murchison) what do you mean shallow? He’s rich!...What
other qualities a man got to have to satisfy you little girl? (P.32)
Beneatha: I’m going to be a doctor. I’m not worried about who I’m going to
marry yet-if I ever get married.
Mama and Ruth: if!
__________________________
Ruth: (suddenly) let him go and drink himself to death! He makes me sick to
my stomach!
Walter (violently) And you turn mine too baby!....That was my greatest mistake
(p.51)
__________________________
Ruth asks Walter “why can’t you stop fighting me?”…Rosie and JP are the
complete opposite…..how?
Walter (to Ruth) How we gets to the place where we scared to talk softness to
each other (p.63) whereas JP and Rosie often talk “softness” to each other, can
you think of examples?
Ruth highlights to him that “life doesn’t have to be like this….you remember…
about the way we were going to live…well, it’s all starting to slip away from
us…. (page 66).
Walter’s desire to escape negatively effects their relationship because he is not
getting the support he wants from Ruth. On the other hand, it is the desire to
evade homelessness that brings Rosie and JP together.
However, when escape seems possible Walter is in a terrific mood, as evident in
his ecstatic lifting of Travis into the air and description of how he sees their
future lift, his pitch rising in “hysterical promise”….his relationship with Ruth
improves.
Ruth comments that they went to the movies and “held hands”.
Walter his happiness is deep in him; he cannot keep still with his newfound
exuberance….he dances over to Ruth and tries to get her to dance with him…
she gives in at last to his raunchiness and in a fit of giggles allows herself to be
drawn into his mood and they deliberately burlesque an old social dance of
their youth.
Walter also “comes to Mama suddenly and….squeezes her in his arms with all
his strength. She is overwhelmed by the suddenness of it…though delighted”
(p.93.) (Relationship has improved)
The family buy Mama gardening tools and a hat to show their appreciation of
her “it is the first present in her life without it being Christmas” (p.94). This is a
tender moment where they all laugh at the size of the hardening hat Travis
bought her. Can be compared to the tender moment in Rosie’s car with the
“yum yum” chips. It shows the family bond. While the bond in RIS has been
created by the hope of moving house and investing in the liquor store, the bond
in Rosie comes from the fact that they have nothing and no one else except each
other. However, the reprieve from their destitute situation is short lived. Rosie
receives the devastating response that the emergency line cannot help.
Similarly, the Youngers hear some dream shattering news, that Willy stole all of
the family’s money. Both families break down, but to very different degrees.
Rosie and JP step outside the car to discuss the matter, totally dumfounded by
what to do. They cry together and console each other. JP tells Rosie he loves her
to which she replies “so you should”. Such a strong bond is not seen in RIS at
this point. Mama “looks at her son without recognition…and starts to beat him
senselessly in the face”…. “I seen him night after night…killing himself…and
you-you give it away in a day” (p.100). The mood becomes one of “profound
disappointment” .

Gender roles (what is expected of a woman and what it means to be a man

Power in the family.
Being a mother/matriarch
Walter: This is just what is wrong with the colored women in this world. Don't
understand about building their men up and making ‘em feel like they
somebody (JP doesn’t expect anything like this, he and Rosie support each other
equally)
Ruth: There are coloured men who do things.
__________________________

Walter: Ain’t many girls who decide…(Beneatha chimes in)… to be a

doctor……(George “still thinks that’s pretty funny” says Beneatha)
Mama is a woman who has adjusted to many things in life and overcome many
more, her face is full of strength. (Mama is the matriarch of the family, like
Rosie)
Mama is always using this role to influence and parent her children.
__________________________
Mama: “there are some ideas we ain’t going to have in this house. Not as long
as I am head of this family.
(After slapping Beneatha and forcing her to admit there is still God in the
house……..which Beneatha sees as being a tyrant, is Rosie seen as a tyrant by
her children do you think?).
__________________________
Mama can’t understand her children, even though everything she does is for
them. “There’s something come down between me and then that don’t let us
understand each other and I don’t know what it is” (p.34).
Rosie also does her best for her children but while Mama struggles with raising
her children to be honest, dignified people, Rosie is more concerned with the
basic care of her children. Kayleigh and Alfie may not understand this at times,
like Walter and Bennie, but in the end they stay with her and the conflict is
resolved. Of course this is because Walter and Bennie are adult children who
have their own strong voices and opinions whereas Rosie’s children are younger
so Rosie has much more control. Despite these differences, Rosie and Mama’s
children rely on them completely.
__________________________
Mama: (to Walter) You still in my house and my presence. And as long as you
are-you’ll take to your wife civil now (p.51)….do you think Rosie is as
dominant?
 __________________________
Mama (telling Walter to stop Ruth from getting an abortion) I’m still waiting to
hear how you be your father’s son. Be the man he was……….you are a disgrace
to your father’s memory (p.54)
__________________________
Walter announces “I am a man-and I think my wife should wear some pearls in
this house”. (p.112) As the man of the house he feels it is his responsibility to
do whatever it takes to get his family out of a hole, even if that means letting
himself be bought out by a white man and therefore foregoing his dignity and
allowing himself to be discriminated against. Even though Bennie is disgusted
with him “that is not a man. That is nothing but a toothless rat”, Mama defends
him saying that “he’s at his lowest…the world done whipped him”. She shares
Rosie’s compassion for the pressure the man of the family experiences. Rosie is
kind to JP when he apologises for not being able to take care of the family and
even though Mama expresses a similar compassion for Walter, conversely she
expects him to step in and be a man.
Luckily, in the end Walter realizes that “we come from people who had a lot of
pride” and tells Mr. Lindner “we don’t want your money”. He does the right
thing, just like JP does when he leaves the car and sits on the crate. Both men do
right by their family, to protect them. The difference is that Walter’s decision
means that the family gets to “get the hell out of here”, they escape their
cramped, run down house and move to the new neighborhood, an advancement
that JP’s actions unfortunately does not result in. We see a completely different
scenario where JP looks forlornly out over his family sleeping in the car in a
empty carpark. The ending is full of hope and relief in RIS but in Rosie it is
hopeless, frightening and bleak.
Mama notes that Walter “finally came into his manhood today, didn’t he? Kind
of like a rainbow after the rain”. It took time for Walter to become the man he
needed to be for his family but in the end, he rose to the challenge and the
family exit the scene as a coherent and hopeful unit. Alternatively, JP was
always a reliable man who took care of his family but unfortunately, the forces
of the cultural context were too strong for him to surmount. They are unable to
secure a bed for the night and are forced to sleep in the car. Unlike Walter, JP is
powerless to do anything to change this because there is simply no support or
alternative options for them. Walter is able to shake off the shackles of
prejudice and class so that his family can move up in the world, yet JP and his
family remain limited and stuck.
Love/sacrifice
Ruth (to Mama): forget about the family and have yourself a ball for once in
your life….these here rich woman do it all the time (p.27)
Mama: I ‘spec if it wasn’t for you all…I would just put that money away or give
it to the church or something (p.49)
Mama: when the world gets ugly enough-a woman will do anything for her
family (p.54)
Mama, like Rosie, does everything for her family.
Mama: Son-I just tried to find the nicest place for the least amount of money for
my family (p.69)….I just seen my family falling apart today….when it gets like
that in life-you just got to do something different, push on out and do something
bigger” (p.71)
Mama tells Walter… “I ain’t never really wanted nothing that wasn’t for
you”……I’m telling you to be the head of this family from now on like you
supposed to be” (p81)…..this is her way of parenting Walter, to get him to
become a competent man who can take charge of and care of the family. Rosie,
cares for her children too but in a very different way. Of course they are much
younger, which accounts for different parenting but like Mama, she looks out
for her children. Unlike Mama, however, he role is to satisfy basic care and
safety needs her children have, while Mama tries to shape her children as adults,
to be honest, hard-working people who do the right thing.