A Raisin in the Sun – Lorraine Hansberry
I find this play interesting because I just recently studied literature involving the theme of race in another class. Plus, it has
been amazingly fun to listen to my classmates act out the plays. I’ve never really been in a class like this before. I particularly don’t enjoy plays as much as I enjoy short stories or poems, but it helps to understand them when they are acted out.
The play itself is about a family, the Youngers, who has received a $10,000 insurance check because the grandfather, Mr. Younger Sr., passed away. The individuals in the family all have ideas for what to do with the money. Mama (the grandmother) and Ruth (Walter Jr.’s wife) want to have the family move into a new house. Walter (Mama’s son and Ruth’s husband) wants to invest the money into owning a liquor store. Beneatha (Mama’s daughter and Walter’s sister) wants is to be used for her schooling.
Mama makes a down payment on a house, but the people in the neighborhood try to bribe the Youngers not to move into it because they are Africa American and the neighborhood is a white neighborhood. Walter unwisely gives the rest money to his friend for investing in the store and his friend runs off with it. Meanwhile, Beneatha rejects a guy, George Murchison, because he doesn’t embrace his culture. Another man, Joseph Asagai, proposes to take her to Nigeria with him. We don’t get to see her answer. Throughout the play there are tensions between the family members. In the end, they move into the house.
In moving into the house that Mama wanted them to move into, they stood against discrimination. The house would 
mean better family relations. It would bring them closer. Despite the tensions, they end up uniting. The racial issue, introduced mainly by Mr. Linder, was one of discrimination. Either the family would give into the bribe and not move into the house because the white neighborhood didn’t want them, or they would stand against the discrimination and come out of the situation strong both against the racial discrimination and as a family. They ended up standing strong in what they did. They stood up in dignity against the mindset of the neighborhood. The neighborhood didn’t want them around because they were black, but the Youngers brushed it off their shoulders and did what they dreamed to do.
It is really interesting what Prof wrote/drew out on the board about generations. We have three generations in the play (the 4, 5, and 6th.. because Travis was mentioned as the 6th generation). The fourth is Mama and her deceased husband. The fifth generation is Walter, Ruth, and Beneatha. The sixth was Travis, Ruth and Walter’s son. The distance between each generation is significant because it marks the differences in the family members. Over all, Mama is the wisest, not only because she is older than the rest of them, because she was closer to slavery than the others. She knew what was 
important. She wanted her family to be whole and to get along. Her attention was where the others’ should have been as well from the beginning. Walter, Ruth, and Beneatha were a part of a generation that strove towards making something out of themselves (specifically Walter and Beneatha). It was the generation that was touched with the light from the “American dream”. Travis, as the most recent generation in the family, would have the opportunity to see the most because the times were changing. He would live in the time of Malcom X and Martin Luther King Jr.
A symbol that I saw in the play was the plant that Mama had. I think it represents the desire she had for the family to be united. In the beginning, she was talking about how even though it doesn’t get enough light or water, it still stays healthy because she cares for it. Even though her family has tensions and her children fight with each other, she held onto the hope that it would happen.
Another symbol could be Beneatha’s hair. In the beginning, she has it straightened, not keeping it natural. Later on though, she cuts it later so that only unstraightened, natural hair is left on her head. This shows her ideas about assimilation. Not straightening her hair means embracing what is natural, embracing her culture. It is a denial of conformity and society’s expectations. She stayed true to herself, finding cultural and racial identity. In that, she was able to define herself better than in the beginning. She was able to have dignity in her culture despite what was going on in the society at the time.
Literature! 
It’s really interesting that you identified the significance of Beneatha’s hair. There is a really striking scene in Malcolm X’s autobiography where he condemns the straightening of black hair and calls it degrading. This is a motif that you’ll find in quite a few African American novels.