Lorraine Hansberrys A Raisin in the Sun - Essay Example

Lorraine Hansberry’s ‘A Raisin in the Sun’ Lorraine Hansberry is one of the most prominent and remarkable revolutionary playwrights. ‘A Raisin in the Sun’ by Hansberry, was the first ever-performed play in the Broadway, composed by a black woman, in the year of 1959. It also claimed the New York Drama Critics Circle Award as the best play of the year. Racial discrimination, has led to several other socio-political as well as economic issues in all the ages, in the pages of the world history, especially in the Western world. In this particular drama, the playwright not only focuses on the hitches of a black family or a black man in, but the dramatist speaks of all the individuals, who are desperate to live a life of dignity and esteem. Hansberry’s play reminds of a treasured piece of novel by Toni Morrison- ‘Beloved’. The theme of crisis due to racial discrimination, especially among the black people, and their prolonged struggle to gain back their individual dignity, has been an extremely significant and focal issue in the African or Afro-American literature. Lorraine Hansberry’s ‘A Raisin in the Sun’ provides with a profound and massive range of consciousness, which emerges among the black people. This play portrays a certain part of Southside Chicago in the 1950s, and its tumultuous situation in the Early Civil Rights Movement setting. The play ineradicably alters the pre-conceived ideas about society and country as well as fabricates a fresh social awareness and consciousness of the nation and the world. Chicago Southside is known from a long time, especially after the mid twentieth century as an area with a large part of the Afro-American population. This area is notable for its miscellaneous population. The people had already witnessed the destructive fits of World War II and the Great Depression period. However, in the 1950s Chicago had to face the worst repercussions of the post industrial revolution era. The ‘meatpacking’ companies started to fold up their business wings rapidly, resulting in a devastating amount of unemployment. Lorraine Hansberry’s play ‘Raising in the Sun’ is set against the backdrop of this time. These brief annals of time are not to understand the play but the turmoil in the time that it deals with. This situation inevitably gave rise to immense economic problems, which also affects the Younger family in this play. This is evident in many places of the play, such as when Mama says to her son that she has been “waiting to see you, stand up and look like your daddy and say we done give up one baby to poverty and that we ain’t going to give up…another one.” (Hansberry, 75). The deterioration in the economic and socio-political structure claimed much sacrifice from these families, both financial and physical. The Early Civil Rights Movement was based closely on the dignity and discrimination issues among the blacks and the whites in the western world, which connotes with this ply, though it is not directly mentioned here. It could be traced in the yearning of the Younger family, who wants to remove the tag of poverty from their back and gain the identity of a middle-class family. At the time when this play is constructed, most of the black people referred to themselves as colored or Negro, because the society termed them with these names. (Morrin & Hansberry, 21). It is more clear through the struggle of elder Mr. Younger, that he faced with the adversities of the world, because “At the time he had been alive, there was no Civil Rights Movement, no highly organized working together of great numbers of people,” (Morrin & Hansberry, 21). It was a just like a reverie for the black people who desired for a space of equilibrium for the white and black people. The universal theme of women’s subjugated place in any given patriarchal social structure is another point that emerges from this play by Hansberry. From this play, we get to know the roles like Mama, who gets the head position in the family but that is only an obligation following the death of her husband. She mostly engages herself in typical household works as found in that contemporary time in the nuclear families. However, her interference in her children’s lives is not a tyranny, but a concern that she experiences from her own struggle. She lulls herself with a definite dream to get a good house in a white locality with the money she gets from her husband’s death. Especially through the character of Beneatha Younger, the double folded oppression of the black women is prominent. In that time, “it would have been considered laughable that a woman wanted to actualize herself apart from the traditional family structure.” (Morrin & Hansberry, 21) Beneatha tries to break this notion with her steadfastness and iconoclastic views about a modern woman’s life. Moreover, the plight was double for the black women was double, firstly for their color and secondly for gender. This agony is structured in one dialogue: “…something always told me I wasn’t no rich white woman.” (Hansberry, 44). This difficulty for women is a universal one, as it has always been true for all the women who struggle incessantly in this world just to establish an identity of their own, as struggle begins at home for them. Money is important for any individual as well as family in anywhere, at any time. However, money is a stark necessity of livelihood for those who lack it greatly. In this particular play, money plays a big role as the play revolves around the issue of $ 10,000 that the family gets following the death of the father. The conflict rises in the family about how the money should be spent. Whereas, the mother dreams of a good house in a good and white locality, the son wants it for his liquor business. The universal consequence that money arouses in a lower middle class or poverty-stricken family. This point comes true in this play in several places, such as when Ruth tells to Travis in one place: “you get your mind off money and eat your breakfast.” (Hansberry, 28). The money problem never goes off their mind throughout the play. Scarcity of money and the adjoining problems that come with it is a universal issue it keeps bothering a certain class of people always in all the parts of world, where the other class keeps enjoying a lavish life. Before concluding it may be noted that, “The praise for A Raising in the Sun begun long before it reached Broadway.” (Bunche, Clark & Hansberry, 181). Therefore, the significance of this play is high. Its popularity grew not only between the African and the Afro-American people, but also in the minds of the sensitive people who are benevolent towards the entire humanity. “Lorraine Hansberry completed her best known work A Raisin in the Sun, in 1957.” (Cody & Sprinchorn, 1116), but its impact stirred the global arena of drama for ages. Works Cited: 1. Cody, Gabrielle H. & Evert Sprinchorn. The Columbia encyclopedia of modern drama. New York, USA: Columbia University Press. 2007. 2. Hansberry, Lorraine. A Raisin in the Sun. USA: Vintage Books. 1994. 3. Keppel, Ben. The work of democracy: Ralph Bunch, Kenneth B. Clark, Lorraine Hansberry and the cultural politics of race. Cambridge, USA : Harvard University Press. 1995. 4. Morrin, Maxine & Lorraine Hansberry. Lorraine Hansberrys A raisin in the sun . USA: Research & Education Association. 1994. . Read More