A Raisin in the Sun - Essay Example

Cultural Theory in Raisin in the Sun Although black people were considered free going into the 1960s, they were still deeply resented and still considered a substandard race. Although the industrialized cities generally offered greater opportunity for the black family, the North was not much better, culturally speaking, than the South. Not as widely recognized, the social boundaries for black people in Northern cities were significant. In “A Raisin in the Sun”, Lorraine Hansberry exposes the hidden cultural boundaries her characters encounter as they each define a modest version of the American dream while trying to determine how best to spend their $10,000 insurance check.Mr. Younger (Big Walter) and Mrs.

Lena Younger had once dreamed of home ownership as she reveals to Ruth in Act I, scene 1: “We was goin’ to set away little by little and buy a little place out in Morgan Park. Had even picked out the house … you should know all the dreams I had about buyin’ that house and fixin’ it up; makin’ me a little garden in the back … And didn’t none of it never happen” (Hansberry 69). Lena and her husband soon discovered that there wasn’t anything left over each week to save. That Lena and Big Walter struggled their entire lives to provide shelter for their children and could never manage anything greater than the small two bedroom apartment that they “wasn’t planning on living here no more than a year” (Hansberry 44) indicates the struggle they had just to survive.

Their inability to attain the house of their dreams was not the result of a lack of effort but instead the result of a lack of opportunity. To buy the house now would simply ensure the family remains slaves to the house. Lena’s daughter, Beneatha, feels the money should be spent on her medical education. As a doctor, she is assured to make enough money to support the rest of the family while they seek their dreams. However, the medical profession was not an accepted occupation for a woman so Beneatha’s success was not guaranteed and the money would be wasted if she fails.

Beneatha feels bounded by poverty and her gender as expressed to Joseph Asagai in Act I, scene 2. She tells him “Go ahead and laugh – but I’m not interested in being someone’s little episode in America” (Hansberry 92). Not only race but gender serves to bind her into a cultural definition she constantly struggles against. Walter, Lena’s son, feels the best way for him to help the family succeed is to go into business for himself as only entrepreneurs make any money. This is because the only jobs available to black people are low paying.

With a business of his own, he is sure he’ll be able to pay for Beneatha’s education and enable his mother and his pregnant wife to stop working while still buying the house they all dream of. Like Beneatha, Walter is trapped within the oppressive structure of the white man’s world. Ruth, his wife, wants to support Walter in his dream but privately shares Lena’s hope for the security of a comfortable home. At the opening of the play, she is considering abortion not because she doesn’t want the baby, but because she is not sure that the family can afford another mouth to feed coupled with her absence from work.

However, by the end of the play, the family’s move into a real home complete with a backyard and a garden that the grandchildren will play in symbolize the growing equality and opportunity that the black race was beginning to discover as they forced opportunity for themselves. Even then, though, the family’s future remains uncertain as there are new boundaries for them to overcome. They have the house, fair and legal, but their white neighbors are less than welcoming. What this story demonstrates is that while the black man may have achieved the right to work and earn a living, the cost of living was set so high that he was kept always at a subsistence level, never gaining the opportunity to ‘lay by’ anything for the future.

Works CitedHansberry, Lorraine. A Raisin in the Sun. New York: Signet Books, 1986.