Project 1 - The Fable and Plot Summary

The Fable

A black family, living in Chicago, with dreams of their own. They have had a recent tragedy – their patriarch died. His death left them with some hope, in the form of his life insurance check of $10,000. This inheritance ends up bringing a family a bit apart than allowing them to strive together to overcome the menacing shadow of society. See, while everyone wants the same thing for the family, everyone of them wants to do it in a different way. Walter Lee, for instance, wants to open a liquor store with Bobo, and Willy Harris. While no one else in the younger household sees this as a proper investment, Walter fights with all his might to make this a reality. However, is it just because he wants better for his family, or does he want to prove something to somebody that black people don’t have to become chauffer’s, maids, and cook just to make it in this world? Lena, the family matriarch, wants nothing more than what she has fought for her entire life, something better. Living in a dilapidated apartment on the impoverished side of town was never the extent of her dreams. She wants to move the family into a house, clean, and nice that they can call home – not just a place that’s falling apart that they sleep in. She wants somewhere where the family doesn’t have to share the bathroom with the rest of the floor. She doesn’t want them to have to scrounge to make things seem a lot better than they are, because she has a chance to make them better. Ruth, Walter’s wife, just wants the family to be a family. While we don’t see this that much, her deepest desire is to see everyone loving each other, she, however, knows that it won’t happen as long as she is forced to live in the shadow and trenches of the centuries-long war that has been waged against the races. Beneatha, Lena’s daughter and Walter’s brother, wants to find her identity. She wants to find where she has been and what she used to be. She doesn’t see that Lena knows the struggle and defiance of the past; Lena can tell her more than she ever wanted to know, but she doesn’t to save her. Lena also doesn’t exactly want to remember it, she just wants to look forward and what can be. Travis, the ten-year-old son of Ruth and Walter, see the family and wants what they want; freedom. Not just from the oppression of the time, but from the torment of living life on the helpless, hungry side of town. The whole family wants him to get an education. They’ve lived their lives, and they strive to try and make things different for him.

When the check arrives, the family split even more, having arguments and disputes about should and could be done with the money. However, the ultimate decision is to Lena (Mama). The money is hers, and she knows what she wants to do with it. When they find out that Ruth is pregnant, an planning an abortion, Mama struggles to convince her that it’s wrong, and that this money will help take care of another child. But, Ruth doesn’t listen, she has seen what this world that they live in does to children, and does not want to try and bring another one into it. However, the two fighting forces decide to go ahead with their ideas. Mama goes to look at a two story house, and Walter decides to invest in the liquor store. Walter gets taken for a ride, and his money is gone with Willy Harris. Mama lets the family know about the house – which she has put a down payment on. A white man, Karl Linder, comes to let them know that the neighborhood, while friendly, does not wish to integrate their family into the community. He tries to scare them,

Walter decides to take a holier-than-thou approach to this claim and calls him up to tell him that they will not be moving. But, when he shows up to have papers signed that they will not be moving in, Lena confronts Walter, and tells him to tell Karl why they won’t be moving into the house. Walter takes his time to man up. He tells Karl that the family wants nothing more than to move; to have a better life. They will be joining the neighborhood. He has seen how even men of the same race can screw you over. He has decided to believe in the work that they can do. Nothing comes free, and he has decided that he can work out their family and figure out how to succeed. Their new life will be full of dignity, and pride. Not like the one they have been living for the past umpteen years. A life of change, and dreams that are coming ever-closer to being fulfilled.

Plot Summary

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 a better life. They believe that they can succeed if they stick together as a family and resolve to defer their dreams no longer. Spark Notes.

Project 1- Characters

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 father’s insurance money in a new liquor store venture. He spends the rest of the play endlessly preoccupied with discovering a quick solution to his family’s various problems.


Beneatha Younger (“Bennie”) - Mama’s daughter and Walter’s 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 Beneatha’s mother. The matriarch of the family, Mama is religious, moral, and maternal. She wants to use her husband’s 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 - Walter’s wife and Travis’s 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 Ruth’s 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 Walter’s 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.

Character descriptions from SparkNotes.

Project 1 - Basic Facts

Lorraine Hansberry's dramatic play, A Raisin In The Sun, was first performed on March 11, 1959. It was written, originally, in English (American).


3 Acts - Act 1, two scenes
Act 2, three scenes
Act 3, one scene


The cast consists of six older black men (in their thirties), three older black women (one in her sixties, one about thirty, and one about twenty), one middle-aged white man, and a young black boy of about ten or eleven.


3 hours, including 15-minute intermission.
http://www.curtainup.com/raisininthesunny.html

Lorraine Hansberry
(born May 19, 1930, Chicago, Ill., U.S.—died Jan. 12, 1965, New York, N.Y.) American playwright whose A Raisin in the Sun (1959) was the first drama by an African American woman to be produced on Broadway.

Hansberry was interested in writing from an early age and while in high school was drawn especially to the theatre. She attended the University of Wisconsin in 1948–50 and then briefly the school of the Art Institute of Chicago and Roosevelt University (Chicago). After moving to New York City, she held various minor jobs and studied at the New School for Social Research while refining her writing skills. In 1958 she raised funds to produce her play A Raisin in the Sun, which opened in March 1959 at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre on Broadway, meeting with great success.

A penetrating psychological study of the personalities and emotional conflicts within a working-class black family in Chicago, A Raisin in the Sun was directed by actor Lloyd Richards, the first African American to direct a play on Broadway since 1907. It won the New York Drama Critics' Circle Award, and the film version of 1961 received a special award at the Cannes Festival. Hansberry's next play, The Sign in Sidney Brustein's Window, a drama of political questioning and affirmation set in Greenwich Village, New York City, where she had long made her home, had only a modest run on Broadway in 1964. Her promising career was cut short by her early death.

In 1969 a selection of her writings, adapted by Robert Nemiroff (to whom Hansberry was married from 1953 to 1964), was produced on Broadway as To Be Young, Gifted, and Black and was published in book form in 1970.

Biography from Biography.com

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

The version of A Raisin In the Sun that I will be using for this project comes from the publisher Signet:
Hansberry, Lorraine. A Raisin In The Sun. New York: New American Library - A Signet Book, 1966.

Performance rights can be purchased from Samuel French Publishing for $100 per performance. Samuel French.

Definitions of Dramaturgy

1) The art of the theater, especially the writing of plays.
- The Free Dictionary -

2) The art or technique of dramatic composition and theatrical representation
- Merriam-Webster -

3) The art of writing plays or producing them
- Your Dictionary -


-Gotthold Ephraim Lessing-