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A RAISIN IN THE SUN –ENG2603 https://www.sparknotes.com/lit/raisin/summary/Classification: Public
Plot Overview
A Raisin in the Sun portrays a few weeks in the life of the Youngers, an African-American family
living on the South Side of Chicago in the 1950s. When the play opens, the Youngers are
about to receive an insurance check for $10,000. This money comes from the deceased Mr.
Younger’s life insurance policy. Each of the adult members of the family has an idea as to
what he or she would like to do with this money. The matriarch of the family, Mama, wants to
buy a house to fulfill a dream she shared with her husband. Mama’s son, Walter Lee, would
rather use the money to invest in a liquor store with his friends. He believes that the
investment will solve the family’s financial problems forever. Walter’s wife, Ruth, agrees with
Mama, however, and hopes that she and Walter can provide more space and opportunity for
their son, Travis. Finally, Beneatha, Walter’s sister and Mama’s daughter, wants to use the
money for her medical school tuition. She also wishes that her family members were not so
interested in joining the white world. Beneatha instead tries to find her identity by looking back
to the past and to Africa.
As the play progresses, the Youngers clash over their competing dreams. Ruth discovers that
she is pregnant but fears that if she has the child, she will put more financial pressure on her
family members. When Walter says nothing to Ruth’s admission that she is considering
abortion, Mama puts a down payment on a house for the whole family. She believes that a
bigger, brighter dwelling will help them all. This house is in Clybourne Park, an entirely white
neighborhood. When the Youngers’ future neighbors find out that the Youngers are moving in,
they send Mr. Lindner, from the Clybourne Park Improvement Association, to offer the
Youngers money in return for staying away. The Youngers refuse the deal, even after Walter
loses the rest of the money ($6,500) to his friend Willy Harris, who persuades Walter to invest
in the liquor store and then runs off with his cash.
In the meantime, Beneatha rejects her suitor, George Murchison, whom she believes to be
shallow and blind to the problems of race. Subsequently, she receives a marriage proposal
from her Nigerian boyfriend, Joseph Asagai, who wants Beneatha to get a medical degree and
move to Africa with him (Beneatha does not make her choice before the end of the play). The
Youngers eventually move out of the apartment, fulfilling the family’s long-held dream. Their
future seems uncertain and slightly dangerous, but they are optimistic and determined to live
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a better life. They believe that they can succeed if they stick together as a family and resolve
to defer their dreams no longer:
Act I, scene i
Summary
It is morning at the Youngers’ apartment. Their small dwelling on the South Side of Chicago
has two bedrooms—one for Mama and Beneatha, and one for Ruth and Walter Lee. Travis
sleeps on the couch in the living room. The only window is in their small kitchen, and they
share a bathroom in the hall with their neighbors. The stage directions indicate that the
furniture, though apparently once chosen with care, is now very worn and faded. Ruth gets up
first and after some noticeable difficulty, rouses Travis and Walter as she makes breakfast.
While Travis gets ready in the communal bathroom, Ruth and Walter talk in the kitchen. They
do not seem happy, yet they engage in some light humor. They keep mentioning a check.
Walter scans the front page of the newspaper and reads that another bomb was set off, and
Ruth responds with indifference. Travis asks them for money—he is supposed to bring fifty
cents to school—and Ruth says that they do not have it. His persistent nagging quickly irritates
her. Walter, however, gives Travis an entire dollar while staring at Ruth. Travis then leaves for
school, and Walter tells Ruth that he wants to use the check to invest in a liquor store with a
few of his friends. Walter and Ruth continue to argue about their unhappy lives, a dialogue
that Ruth cuts short by telling her husband, “Eat your eggs, they gonna be cold.”
Beneatha gets up next and after discovering that the bathroom is occupied by someone from
another family, engages in a verbal joust with Walter. He thinks that she should be doing
something more womanly than studying medicine, especially since her tuition will cut into the
check, which is the insurance payment for their father’s death. Beneatha argues that the
money belongs to Mama and that Mama has the right to decide how it is spent. Walter then
leaves for his job as a chauffeur—he has to ask Ruth for money to get to work because the
money he gave Travis was his car fare. Mama enters and goes directly to a small plant that
she keeps just outside the kitchen window. She expresses sympathy for her grandson, Travis,
while she questions Ruth’s ability to care for him properly. She asks Ruth what she would do
with the money, which amounts to $10,000. For once, Ruth seems to be on Walter’s side. She
thinks that if Mama gives him some of the money he might regain his happiness and
confidence, which are two things Ruth feels she can no longer provide for Walter. Mama,
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though, feels morally repulsed by the idea of getting into the liquor business. Instead, she
wants to move to a house with a lawn on which Travis can play. Owning a house had always
been a dream she had shared with her husband, and now that he is gone she nurtures this
dream even more powerfully.
Mama and Ruth begin to tease Beneatha about the many activities that she tries and quits,
including her latest attempt to learn how to play the guitar. Beneatha claims that she is trying
to “express” herself, an idea at which Ruth and Mama have a laugh. They discuss the man
that Beneatha has been dating, George Murchison. Beneatha gets angry as they praise
George because she thinks that he is “shallow.” Mama and Ruth do not understand her
ambivalence toward George, arguing that she should like him simply because he is rich.
Beneatha contends that, for that very reason, any further relationship is pointless, as George’s
family wouldn’t approve of her anyway. Beneatha makes the mistake of using the Lord’s name
in vain in front of Mama, which sparks another conversation about the extent of God’s
providence. Beneatha argues that God does not seem to help her or the family. Mama,
outraged at such a pronouncement, asserts that she is head of the household and that there
will be no such thoughts expressed in her home. Beneatha recants and leaves for school, and
Mama goes to the window to tend her plant. Ruth and Mama talk about Walter and Beneatha,
and Ruth suddenly faints.
Act I, scene i
Analysis
All of the characters in A Raisin in the Sun have unfulfilled dreams. These dreams mostly
involve money. Although the Younger family seems alienated from white middle-class culture,
they harbor the same materialistic dreams as the rest of American society. In the 1950s, the
stereotypical American dream was to have a house with a yard, a big car, and a happy family.
The Youngers also seem to want to live this dream, though their struggle to attain any
semblance of it is dramatically different from the struggle a similar suburban family might
encounter, because the Youngers are not a stereotypical middle-class family. Rather, they
live in a world in which being middle class is also a dream.
Mama’s plant symbolizes her version of this dream, because she cares for it as she cares for
her family. She tries to give the plant enough light and water not only to grow but also to
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flourish and become beautiful, just as she attempts to provide for her family with meager yet
consistent financial support. Mama also imagines a garden that she can tend along with her
dream house. The small potted plant acts as a temporary stand-in for her much larger dream.
Her relentless care for the plant represents her protection of her dream. Despite her cramped
living situation and the lifetime of hard work that she has endured, she maintains her focus
on her dream, which helps her to persevere. Still, no matter how much Mama works, the plant
remains feeble, because there is so little light. Similarly, it is difficult for her to care for her
family as much as she wants and to have her family members grow as much as she wants.
Her dream of a house and a better life for her family remains tenuous because it is so hard
for her to see beyond her family’s present situation.
Beneatha’s dream differs from Mama’s in that it is, in many ways, self-serving. In her desires
to “express” herself and to become a doctor, Beneatha proves an early feminist who radically
views her role as self-oriented and not family-oriented. Feminism had not fully emerged into
the American cultural landscape when Hansberry wrote A Raisin in the Sun, and Beneatha
seems a prototype for the more enthusiastic feminism of the 1960s and 1970s. She not only
wants to have a career—a far cry from the June Cleaver stay-at-home-mom role models of the
1950s (June Cleaver was the name of the mother on Leave it to Beaver, a popular late-1950s
sitcom about a stereotypical suburban family)—but also desires to find her identity and pursue
an independent career without relying solely on a man. She even indicates to Ruth and Mama
that she might not get married, a possibility that astonishes them because it runs counter to
their expectations of a woman’s role. Similarly, they are befuddled by her dislike of the “pretty,
rich” George Murchison. That Beneatha’s attitude toward him differs from Ruth’s or Mama’s
may result from the age difference among the three women. Mama and Beneatha are, of
course, a generation apart, while Ruth occupies a place somewhere in the middle; Hansberry
argues that Beneatha is the least traditional of the women because she is the youngest.
Act I, scene i
Walter and Ruth, who occupy the middle ground in terms of age between Mama and
Beneatha, have also tempered their dreams more than Beneatha has. Though Walter and
Ruth harbor materialistic dreams, they desire wealth not solely for self-serving purposes but
rather as a means to provide for their family and escape the South Side ghetto in which they
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