A Raisin in the SunLorraine Hansberry

“Harlem” By Langston Hughes

What happens to a dream deferred?

Does it dry uplike a raisin in the sun?Or fester like a sore—And then run?Does it stink like rotten meat?Or crust and sugar over—Like a syrupy sweet?

Maybe it just sagesLike a heavy load.

Or does it explode?

1. What is the mood of the poem? How does the poet feel about dreams?

2. What is the tone of the poem? If you were to hear the poet read it, what would be the sound of his voice?

3. What simile does the poet use? What does it mean? How might it relate to what is likely to occur in the screenplay?

4. Do you agree with Hughes? Give examples from personal experiences, books, television or film plots about what happens when dreams are lost.

5. Think of songs about dreams. How are the lyrics different? Similar? Why?

6. Write your own poem about dreams.

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What Is Your Life's Blueprint?

Six months before he was assassinated, King spoke to a group of students at Barratt Junior High School in Philadelphia on October 26, 1967.

I want to ask you a question, and that is: What is your life's blueprint?

Whenever a building is constructed, you usually have an architect who draws a blueprint, and that blueprint serves as the pattern, as the guide, and a building is not well erected without a good, solid blueprint.

Now each of you is in the process of building the structure of your lives, and the question is whether you have a proper, a solid and a sound blueprint.

I want to suggest some of the things that should begin your life's blueprint. Number one in your life's blueprint, should be a deep belief in your own dignity, your worth and your own somebodiness. Don't allow anybody to make you fell that you're nobody. Always feel that you count. Always feel that you have worth, and always feel that your life has ultimate significance.

Secondly, in your life's blueprint you must have as the basic principle the determination to achieve excellence in your various fields of endeavor. You're going to be deciding as the days, as the years unfold what you will do in life — what your life's work will be. Set out to do it well.

And I say to you, my young friends, doors are opening to you--doors of opportunities that were not open to your mothers and your fathers — and the great challenge facing you is to be ready to face these doors as they open.

Ralph Waldo Emerson, the great essayist, said in a lecture in 1871, "If a man can write a better book or preach a better sermon or make a better mousetrap than his neighbor, even if he builds his house in the woods, the world will make a beaten path to his door."

This hasn't always been true — but it will become increasingly true, and so I would urge you to study hard, to burn the midnight oil; I would say to you, don't drop out of school. I understand all the sociological reasons, but I urge you that in spite of your economic plight, in spite of the situation that you're forced to live in — stay in school.

And when you discover what you will be in your life, set out to do it as if God Almighty called you at this particular moment in history to do it. don't just set out to do a good job. Set out to do such a good job that the living, the dead or the unborn couldn't do it any better.

If it falls your lot to be a street sweeper, sweep streets like Michelangelo painted pictures, sweep streets like Beethoven composed music, sweep streets like Leontyne Price sings before the Metropolitan Opera. Sweep streets like Shakespeare wrote poetry. Sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will have to pause and say: Here lived a great street sweeper who swept his job well. If you can't be a pine at the top of the hill, be a shrub in the valley. Be be the best little shrub on the side of the hill.

Be a bush if you can't be a tree. If you can't be a highway, just be a trail. If you can't be a sun, be a star. For it isn't by size that you win or fail. Be the best of whatever you are.

— From the estate of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

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Background Knowledge

Lorraine Hansberry was born in Chicago on May 19, 1930, the youngest of four children. Her parents were well-educated, successful black citizens who publicly fought discrimination against black people. When Hansberry was a child, she and her family lived in a black neighborhood on Chicago’s South Side. During this era, segregation—the enforced separation of whites and blacks—was still legal and widespread throughout the South. Northern states, including Hansberry’s own Illinois, had no official policy of segregation, but they were generally self-segregated along racial and economic lines. Chicago was a striking example of a city carved into strictly divided black and white neighborhoods. Hansberry’s family became one of the first to move into a white neighborhood, but Hansberry still attended a segregated public school for blacks. When neighbors struck at them with threats of violence and legal action, the Hansberrys defended themselves. Hansberry’s father successfully brought his case all the way to the Supreme Court.

Hansberry wrote that she always felt the inclination to record her experiences. At times, her writing—including A Raisin in the Sun—is recognizably autobiographical. She was one of the first playwrights to create realistic portraits of African-American life. When A Raisin in the Sun opened in March 1959, it met with great praise from white and black audience members alike. Arguably the first play to portray black characters, themes, and conflicts in a natural and realistic manner, A Raisin in the Sun received the New York Drama Critics’ Circle Award for Best Play of the Year. Hansberry was the youngest playwright, the fifth woman, and the only black writer at that point to win the award. She used her new fame to help bring attention to the American civil rights movement as well as African struggles for independence from colonialism. Her promising career was cut short when she died from cancer in 1965, at the age of thirty-four.

A Raisin in the Sun can be considered a turning point in American art because it addresses so many issues important during the 1950s in the United States. The 1950s are widely mocked in modern times as an age of complacency and conformism, symbolized by the growth of suburbs and commercial culture that began in that decade. Such a view, however, is superficial at best. Beneath the economic prosperity that characterized America in the years following World War II roiled growing domestic and racial tension. The stereotype of 1950s America as a land of happy housewives and blacks content with their inferior status resulted in an upswell of social resentment that would finally find public voice in the civil rights and feminist movements of the 1960s. A Raisin in the Sun, first performed as the conservative 1950s slid into the radical sixties, explores both of these vital issues.

A Raisin in the Sun was a revolutionary work for its time. Hansberry creates in the Younger family one of the first honest depictions of a black family on an American stage, in an age when predominantly black audiences simply did not exist. Before this play, African-American roles, usually small and comedic, largely employed ethnic stereotypes. Hansberry, however, shows an entire black family in a realistic light, one that is unflattering and far from comedic. She uses black vernacular throughout the play and broaches important issues and conflicts, such as poverty, discrimination, and the construction of African-American racial identity.

A Raisin in the Sun explores not only the tension between white and black society but also the strain within the black community over how to react to an oppressive white community.

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Hansberry’s drama asks difficult questions about assimilation and identity. Through the character of Joseph Asagai, Hansberry reveals a trend toward celebrating African heritage. As he calls for a native revolt in his homeland, she seems to predict the anticolonial struggles in African countries of the upcoming decades, as well as the inevitability and necessity of integration.

Hansberry also addressed feminist questions ahead of their time in A Raisin in the Sun. Through the character of Beneatha, Hansberry proposes that marriage is not necessary for women and that women can and should have ambitious career goals. She even approaches an abortion debate, allowing the topic of abortion to enter the action in an era when abortion was illegal. Of course, one of her most radical statements was simply the writing and production of the play—no small feat given her status as a young, black woman in the 1950s.

All of this idealism about race and gender relations boils down to a larger, timeless point—that dreams are crucial. In fact, Hansberry’s play focuses primarily on the dreams driving and motivating its main characters. These dreams function in positive ways, by lifting their minds from their hard work and tough lifestyle, and in negative ways, by creating in them even more dissatisfaction with their present situations. For the most part, however, the negative dreams come from placing emphasis on materialistic goals rather than on familial pride and happiness. Hansberry seems to argue that as long as people attempt to do their best for their families, they can lift each other up. A Raisin in the Sun remains important as a cultural document of a crucial period in American history as well as for the continued debate over racial and gender issues that it has helped spark.

A Note on the Title

Lorraine Hansberry took the title of A Raisin in the Sun from a line in Langston Hughes’s famous 1951 poem“Harlem: A Dream Deferred.” Hughes was a prominent black poet during the 1920sHarlem Renaissance in New York City, during which black artists of all kinds—musicians, poets, writers—gave innovative voices to their personal and cultural experiences. The Harlem Renaissance was a time of immense promise and hopefulness for black artists, as their efforts were noticed and applauded across the United States. In fact, the 1920s are known to history as the Jazz Age, since that musical form, created by a vanguard of black musicians, gained immense national popularity during the period and seemed to embody the exuberance and excitement of the decade. The Harlem Renaissance and the positive national response to the art it produced seemed to herald the possibility of a new age of acceptance for blacks in America.

Langston Hughes was one of the brightest lights of the Harlem Renaissance, and his poems and essays celebrate black culture, creativity, and strength. However, Hughes wrote “Harlem” in 1951, twenty years after the Great Depression crushed the Harlem Renaissance and devastated black communities more terribly than any other group in the United States. In addition, the post–World War II years of the 1950s were characterized by “white flight,”in which whites fled the cities in favor of the rapidly growing suburbs. Blacks were often left behind in deteriorating cities, and were unwelcome in the suburbs. In a time of renewed prosperity, blacks were for the most part left behind.“Harlem” captures the tension between the need for black expression and the impossibility of that expression because of American society’s oppression of its black population. In the poem, Hughes asks whether a “dream deferred”—a dream put on hold—withers up “[l]ike a raisin in the

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sun.” His lines confront the racist and dehumanizing attitude prevalent in American society before the civil rights movement of the 1960s that black desires and ambitions were, at best, unimportant and should be ignored, and at worst, should be forcibly resisted. His closing rhetorical question—“Or does [a dream deferred] explode?”—is incendiary, a bold statement that the suppression of black dreams might result in an eruption. It implicitly places the blame for this possible eruption on the oppressive society that forces the dream to be deferred. Hansberry’s reference to Hughes’s poem in her play’s title highlights the importance of dreams in A Raisin in the Sun and the struggle that her characters face to realize their individual dreams, a struggle inextricably tied to the more fundamental black dream of equality in America.

Chicago HousingLorraine Hansberry's A Raisin in the Sun chronicles the efforts of an African

American family to move out of the ghetto to a better neighborhood. It draws upon a complicated and difficult part of Chicago's history. The play is set sometime between 1945 and 1959, and illustrates many of the conflicts that surrounded the questions of race and housing during this period in Chicago. Although less well known than The Great Migration of 1910-1930, when large numbers of African Americans first moved to Chicago from the South, the period of 1940-1960 actually saw more African Americans arrive in the city, owing to such factors as the availability of industrial jobs during World War II and the collapse of the Southern share-cropping system.

The housing market in Chicago was tight even before the end of World War II when veterans returned in need of housing. African Americans were primarily limited to an area of Chicago known as the "Black Belt," which was located between Twelfth and Seventy-Ninth Street and Wentworth and Cottage Grove Avenue. Approximately 60,000 blacks had moved from the South to Chicago during 1940-44 in search of jobs. In an effort to keep the newly-arriving African Americans out of their neighborhoods, whites within a residential block formed "restrictive covenants," legally binding contracts that specified a house's owner could not rent or sell to black people. Such covenants, by restricting African Americans to the Black Belt, increased overcrowding within this area during the war. When overcrowding continued into the post-war years as more blacks moved north to Chicago, many families would often live in one apartment.

Such overcrowding, while difficult in itself, also contributed to generally poor housing conditions for black families. Because there were so many people living in this one area, demand far exceeded supply and landlords would divide apartments into tiny units called "kitchenettes" and charge exorbitant rents. These apartments often had no bathrooms, with all the occupants of a floor having to share a single hall unit. Buildings sometimes lacked such basic amenities as proper heating. Residents used kerosene lamps instead and their improvised stoves often overheated and caused fires. The partitions used to divide the apartments were flammable as well, adding to the hazardous conditions. Approximately 751 fires occurred in one year in the Black Belt, many of them fatal. Despite building codes, landlords were rarely penalized for owning slum housing and the few landlords who

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were fined found it was far more profitable to pay the usually small fine than to maintain their buildings. These conditions of ramshackle and dangerous housing, neglect and indifference from city officials and poor sanitation resulted in infestation by rats. This is illustrated in A Raisin in the Sun when Travis Younger and his friends kill a rat as "big as a cat." Rats reportedly attacked sleeping children, sometimes maiming and even killing them. Tuberculosis and other diseases spread; the infant mortality and overall death rates were higher in the Black Belt than in the rest of Chicago.

After the war there was an outward migration from the Black Belt into surrounding neighborhoods. In 1948, the Supreme Court declared restrictive covenants unconstitutional. A predominantly white housing boom on the fringes of the city and in the suburbs meant more available housing in the city. An increasing number of African Americans were moving into the middle class and were finally able to get out of the slums – some were able to move to better neighborhoods and enjoy a far better quality of life. In other cases, however, the migration of African Americans only amounted to an expansion of the slums they were trying to escape. Unscrupulous real estate speculators played a large role when African Americans sought to move into better, primarily white neighborhoods. In order to increase their profit margin, speculators would play on the white people's fears of black neighbors. Working-class whites were especially vulnerable to such practices. Their homes often were their only asset and owners feared declining property values. Practices known as "block busting," in which speculators tried to convince working-class whites that their neighborhoods were going to deteriorate owing to an influx of African Americans, took advantage of such fears. Thus, when the speculators offered cash for a house, the white owners often accepted less than the house's actual value on the assumption that their houses would be worth even less later.

Taking advantage of patently racist practices by banks (such as “red-lining”), speculators were able to make a handsome profit off of the incoming African Americans, sometimes doubling their money. Banks would draw a red line around an "undesirable" neighborhood and deny mortgages to the new African American residents. As a result, although African Americans fought housing discrimination by protesting and filing lawsuits, the first African American families seeking to move into these areas would have no choice but to work with the speculators on extremely disadvantageous terms. They could acquire houses for a low down-payment but the speculators would demand an astronomically high monthly payment. Since the black families would also have to sign an installment contract that left the title to the house in the speculator's possession, a family could be evicted for the smallest violation of the housing agreement. Desperate to make the high payments, African American families resorted to the practice of taking in large numbers of boarders. This recreated the condition of too many occupants in too little space. Burdened with the monthly payment to the speculators, they would not have the money to keep up the property they had sought so desperately and the neighborhood would deteriorate. Additionally, black neighborhoods did not receive the same quality of city services; and so the area that had originally looked like the Promised Land to African Americans became another slum.

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Integration of neighborhoods was an extremely charged affair. Riots by white mobs were not uncommon. Most Chicagoans, however, had no idea of the situation's volatility. For much of the 1940's the major newspapers, at the request of the Chicago Commission on Human Relations, would simply not report the occurrence of these riots. The white families who lived along the border of the "Black Belt," and could not afford to move formed neighborhood associations to let blacks know that they were not welcome. In A Raisin in the Sun, Karl Lindner, of the Clybourne Park Improvement Association, visits the Younger family and states, "Negro families are happier when they live in their own communities." Mr. Lindner offers to buy the property back from the Younger family for more than they paid. More often, efforts to keep African Americans out were not so gentle.

Sometimes, the first African American family to move into a white area would require police escorts in order to move around the neighborhood. They suffered constant verbal abuse and the threat of physical violence. Their property was damaged by hurled bricks and explosives were thrown through their windows.

African Americans endured danger and ostracism in the neighborhoods where they were simply seeking a decent place to live.

Sources:Grossman, James R. Land of Hope: Chicago, Black Southerners, and the Great Migration. Chicago: University of

Chicago Press, 1991.Hirsch, Arnold R. Making the Second Ghetto: Race and Housing in Chicago, 1940-1960. Cambridge: Cambridge

University Press, 1983.Strickland, Arvarh E. History of the Chicago Urban League. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2001.Travis, Dempsey J. An Autobiography of Black Chicago. Chicago: Urban Research Press, 1981.Winger, Stewart. "Unwelcome Neighbors," Chicago History. 21.1&2 (1992): 56-72.

Allusions in A Raisin in the SunDirections: The following terms are alluded to directly or indirectly in A Raisin in the Sun. You will be assigned to do some research on some of the topics/allusions on this list. YOU will be responsible for teaching the class a little bit about the topic when appropriate, in class! Learn some information to share with the class, as well as any visuals that may help us understand the topic. (Just have a printed photo to pass around the class.) In the end, everyone will be responsible for knowing ALL of the allusions. Take notes when your peers share their knowledge!

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My Topic(s): ___________________________________________________________________

1. Famous songs and movies from the 1950s

2. Civil Rights Movement in 1950s

3. The Great Migration of African Americans

4. What is Afrocentrism?

5. Cost of housing in 1950s , cost of medical school

6. Chicago’s Southside (1940s-50s)

7. Bantu (language) (p. 81)

8. Who is Booker T. Washington? (p. 103)

9. Chaka (Shaka Zulu)

10.Monsieur le petit bourgeois noir (Meaning? What is bourgeois?)

11.Ku Klux Klan (p. 104)

12.All God’s Chillin Got Wings (p. 122, 125)

13.conked head (hairstyle)

14.Mrs.Miniver (film) (p. 123)

15.peckerwoods, ofay (138)

16.Prometheus (p. 86)

17.Gretta Garbo (p. 96)

18.Scarlett O’Hara (p. 124)

19.sharecroppers

20.Ashanti empire (p. 81)

21.nature of “quiet desperation” (from Thoreau’s Walden)

22.“Thirty pieces and not a coin less” (Biblical reference) (p. 118)

23.Colonialism in and its effects Africa (include a map!)

24.World illiteracy rates in U.S. and Africa

25.NAACP

26.phonograph (p. 76)

27.U.S. Steel (p. 138)

28.Uncle Tom (p. 81) Is it a an insult or compliment to be like him for an African American?

White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsackby Peggy McIntosh

“I was taught to see racism only in individual acts of meanness,not in invisible systems conferring dominance on my group”

DAILY EFFECTS OF WHITE PRIVILEGE

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I decided to try to work on myself at least by identifying some of the daily effects of white privilege in my life. I have chosen those conditions that I think in my case attach somewhat more to skin-color privilege than to class, religion, ethnic status, or geographic location, though of course all these other factors are intricately intertwined. As far as I can tell, my African American coworkers, friends, and acquaintances with whom I come into daily or frequent contact in this particular time, place and time of work cannot count on most of these conditions.

1. I can if I wish arrange to be in the company of people of my race most of the time.

2. I can avoid spending time with people whom I was trained to mistrust and who have learned to mistrust my kind or me.

3. If I should need to move, I can be pretty sure of renting or purchasing housing in an area which I can afford and in which I would want to live.

4. I can be pretty sure that my neighbors in such a location will be neutral or pleasant to me.

5. I can go shopping alone most of the time, pretty well assured that I will not be followed or harassed.

6. I can turn on the television or open to the front page of the paper and see people of my race widely represented.

7. When I am told about our national heritage or about "civilization," I am shown that people of my color made it what it is.

8. I can be sure that my children will be given curricular materials that testify to the existence of their race.

9. If I want to, I can be pretty sure of finding a publisher for this piece on white privilege.

10. I can be pretty sure of having my voice heard in a group in which I am the only member of my race.

11. I can be casual about whether or not to listen to another person's voice in a group in which s/he is the only member of his/her race.

12. I can go into a music shop and count on finding the music of my race represented, into a supermarket and find the staple foods which fit with my cultural traditions, into a hairdresser's shop and find someone who can cut my hair.

13. Whether I use checks, credit cards or cash, I can count on my skin color not to work against the appearance of financial reliability.

14. I can arrange to protect my children most of the time from people who might not like them.

15. I do not have to educate my children to be aware of systemic racism for their own daily physical protection.

16. I can be pretty sure that my children's teachers and employers will tolerate them if they fit school and workplace norms; my chief worries about them do not concern others' attitudes toward their race.

17. I can talk with my mouth full and not have people put this down to my color.

18. I can swear, or dress in second hand clothes, or not answer letters, without having people attribute these choices to the bad morals, the poverty or the illiteracy of my race.

19. I can speak in public to a powerful male group without putting my race on trial.

20. I can do well in a challenging situation without being called a credit to my race.

21. I am never asked to speak for all the people of my racial group.

22. I can remain oblivious of the language and customs of persons of color who constitute the world's majority without feeling in my culture any penalty for such oblivion.

23. I can criticize our government and talk about how much I fear its policies and behavior without being seen as a cultural outsider.

24. I can be pretty sure that if I ask to talk to the "person in charge", I will be facing a person of my race.

25. If a traffic cop pulls me over or if the IRS audits my tax return, I can be sure I haven't been singled out because of my race.

26. I can easily buy posters, post-cards, picture books, greeting cards, dolls, toys and children's magazines featuring people of my race.

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27. I can go home from most meetings of organizations I belong to feeling somewhat tied in, rather than isolated, out-of-place, outnumbered, unheard, held at a distance or feared.

28. I can be pretty sure that an argument with a colleague of another race is more likely to jeopardize her/his chances for advancement than to jeopardize mine.

29. I can be pretty sure that if I argue for the promotion of a person of another race, or a program centering on race, this is not likely to cost me heavily within my present setting, even if my colleagues disagree with me.

30. If I declare there is a racial issue at hand, or there isn't a racial issue at hand, my race will lend me more credibility for either position than a person of color will have.

31. I can choose to ignore developments in minority writing and minority activist programs, or disparage them, or learn from them, but in any case, I can find ways to be more or less protected from negative consequences of any of these choices.

32. My culture gives me little fear about ignoring the perspectives and powers of people of other races.

33. I am not made acutely aware that my shape, bearing or body odor will be taken as a reflection on my race.

34. I can worry about racism without being seen as self-interested or self-seeking.

35. I can take a job with an affirmative action employer without having my co-workers on the job suspect that I got it because of my race.

36. If my day, week or year is going badly, I need not ask of each negative episode or situation whether it had racial overtones.

37. I can be pretty sure of finding people who would be willing to talk with me and advise me about my next steps, professionally.

38. I can think over many options, social, political, imaginative or professional, without asking whether a person of my race would be accepted or allowed to do what I want to do.

39. I can be late to a meeting without having the lateness reflect on my race.

40. I can choose public accommodation without fearing that people of my race cannot get in or will be mistreated in the places I have chosen.

41. I can be sure that if I need legal or medical help, my race will not work against me.

42. I can arrange my activities so that I will never have to experience feelings of rejection owing to my race.

43. If I have low credibility as a leader I can be sure that my race is not the problem.

44. I can easily find academic courses and institutions which give attention only to people of my race.

45. I can expect figurative language and imagery in all of the arts to testify to experiences of my race.

46. I can chose blemish cover or bandages in "flesh" color and have them more or less match my skin.

47. I can travel alone or with my spouse without expecting embarrassment or hostility in those who deal with us.

48. I have no difficulty finding neighborhoods where people approve of our household.

49. My children are given texts and classes which implicitly support our kind of family unit and do not turn them against my choice of domestic partnership.

50. I will feel welcomed and "normal" in the usual walks of public life, institutional and social.

Play InformationSetting: Chicago’s South Side; most likely during the 1950’sTone: Realistic, Somber, IronicPoint of View: 3rd Person ObjectiveProtagonist: Walter Lee Younger

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Major Conflict: The Youngers, a working-class African American family, struggle against economic hardship and racial prejudiceEssential Questions:

1. What is the American Dream?2. What defines us?

Themes: The Value and Purpose of Dreams Stereotypes and Prejudice Strength of Family Identity

Symbols: Mama’s plant

o What do most plants represent?o How is the introduction of the plant early in the screenplay foreshadowing?o How do the shots of and references to the plant reflect the corresponding action of

the screenplay? (7, 66, 78, 170, 206) Sunlight and contrasting darkness. (69, 126, 151). Money

o What is money a symbol of to Walter Lee? (107)o How does Hansberry show the relative wealth of the characters in the play? What is

this wealth symbolic of? Mrs.Holiday’s well-equipped kitchen (39); the Arnolds’ affluent estate (44)

o What does money represent to Beneatha, Ruth, Travis, George Murchison, Asagai, and Herman? Why are their attitudes about money so different?

George Murchison’s white shoes (115-116) and Asagai’s Nigerian robes (91-92; 187-188).o Why are the symbols of these two men’s lives are so different? o What does the symbol tell us about the man, his dreams, and his values?

Irony: African Americans came north to find the economic, social, and educational equality

denied them in the south only to discover the same (133-134). Examples of this can be seen throughout the screenplay: the inadequate housing in the ghettos (4-5), the lack of materials in Travis’ school (13), and price gouging in an African-American neighborhood (56).

The irony of having to pay more for homes and food (56) in poor neighborhoods than in rich neighborhoods.

Lena’s labors ease those of the Holiday family although Lena receives no leisure time or holidays (31-42). Mr. Lindner extols the values of hard work and neighborhood pride as he offers the Youngers “easy” money to stay away from Clybourne Park (162-167).

Goal: Raisin Research Report (More information to follow ), Logs, 10 Minute Play

Language:Lorraine Hansberry uses language to help develop her characters. As in Shakespearean drama, the language in A Raisin in the Sun reflects the social and economic status of the characters in

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the play. The language of the characters helps viewers understand who they are. Read the following lines from the screenplay:

RUTH: What you mean, out? He ain’t hardly had a chance to be in there good yet.(9)

WALTER: Un-hunh. That’s what you mad about, ain’t it? The things I got to talk about with my friends justcouldn’t be important in you mind, could they! (11)

TRAVIS: Teacher says we got to do something ‘bout teaching colored kids ‘bout their history. So they set up afund to buy special books that tell all about the things the poor Negroes did. (13-14)

LENA: Near ‘bout. ‘Cept-’cept, Lord have mercy, when the war, praise God, come along a few years back. Thatsure changed things for a while. My husband had been a porter on the railroads all his life, and just as soon aswe heard they had started taking colored in the de-fense plants and all, me and him both marched right on overand took the classes they was giving in the welding and all. (41)

ASAGAI: Because I suppose all Africans are revolutionaries today, even those who don’t know that they are. Itis the times. In order to survive we must be against most of what is. (50)

BENEATHA: Mama, you don’t understand. It’s all a matter of ideas, and God is just one idea I don’t acept. It’snot important. I an not going out and commit crimes or be immoral because I don’t believe in God. I don’t eventhink about it. It’s just that I get so tired of Him getting credit for all the things the human race achieves throughits own stubborn effort. There simply is no God! There is only Man, and it’s he who makes miracles! (76)

LENA: Now-you say after me: “In my mother’s house there is still God.” (Silence.) “In my mother’s house thereis still God.” (77)

LINDNER: Well-it’s what you might call a sort of welcoming committee, I guess. I mean they-we-I’m thechairman of the committee-go around and see the new people who move into the neighborhood and sort of give them the lowdown on the way we do things out in Clybourne Park....And we also have the category of what the association calls-(he looks eleswhere)-uh-special community problems.... (161)

Questions:

• What do each of these quotes tell you about each person’s character, beliefs, fears, frustrations? What emotions are you likely to hear in the person’s voice?

• Prepare one quote to present to the class as you believe the character would deliver it to the audience. Try it using different tones of voice. Does the meaning change?

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• If the quote is in non-standard English, rewrite it in standard English. Now, answer the same questions about each rewritten quote.

• Prepare to deliver the quote you rewrote to the class as originally written and in standard English. What does each version suggest about the character?

Pre-Reading: Four CornersStatement Strongl

y Disagre

e

Disagree

Agree

Strongly Agree

1. People should do whatever it takes to accomplish their dreams.

SD D A SA

2. Life is fair. SD D A SA3. Inherited money should be equally split among family

members.SD D A SA

4. Finances should be left to the man of the house. SD D A SA5. Racism stopped with the Civil War. SD D A SA6. People learn from their mistakes. SD D A SA7. How you act in a crisis shows who you really are. SD D A SA8. Love conquers all. SD D A SA9. Money changes people. SD D A SA10. It’s important to change with the world. SD D A SA11. Dreaming is a waste of time. SD D A SA12. People are never really happy. SD D A SA

Log Writing (400 words typed; one log per act) Setup:

o Section 1: Using your writer’s eyes to examine and interrogate Hansberry’s craft and purpose. See the questions below to help guide you.

o Section 2: Find an article that connects to your discussion in Section 1. Discuss this article and its connection to the play. Staple this article to the back of the log.

Log Questions to Guide Writing: All Acts

What makes this a screenplay? What role does the camera play?

What purpose does an act serve in a play? Identify and define the literary devices Hansberry

uses. How are the terms stereotype and prejudice related? Explain Hansberry’s use of allusions and symbolism

as literary techniques Compare and contrast differing viewpoints on

heritage and assimilationism. Identify and explain the themes of the play and

discuss how they are developed Discuss the growth of the relationship between Ruth

and Walter Analyze character growth of all major characters in

the play Discuss differing viewpoints on Caucasian

oppression in the 1950s and how these affected African American families

Discuss the differences of opinion among the Youngers, Mrs. Johnson, and George Murchison in relation to the pursuit of dreams

The character of Travis is a very small role. Discuss his importance throughout the play. Why would Hansberry include him but give him very little dialogue and interaction?

Discuss the differences between plays and novels. How do these differences affect character and plot development? Why would Hansberry have written this as a play rather than as a novel?

Act 1 In scene one, what does the setting of the Younger’s

apartment convey about them and their situation? How are Walter and Benethea alike in their

ambitions? How are they different? What is the significance of Travis’ sleeping place? In scene two, what does Africa seem to represent to

Beneatha? Why do you think she objects to being called an assimilationist?

Mama observes to Walter, “Once upon a time freedom used to be life—now it’s money.” What do you think she means by this statement? Do you agree with her?

Mama wants to use most of the money to buy a new home. What does this tell you about her?

How is Beneatha different from Ruth and Mama?

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Asagai explains Beneatha’s nickname as “One for Whom Bread—Food—Is Not Enough.”

What is your favorite quote from the play thus far? Be sure to properly cite it and explain why it’s your favorite.

Act 2 In scene 1, why do you think Walter and Benethea

both become caught up in their African masquerade?

Do you think George Murchison is a snob? Why or why not?

In scene 2, what you do think of Mrs. Johnson’s character? How does her visit intensify the drama?

Do you think Lindner is a racist? Why or why not? What do Benethea’s new attire and haircut

symbolize?

Act 3

How does the loss of the money affect Walter? Benethea? Mama?

What does Asagai mean by this statement: “Then isn’t there something wrong in a house—in a world—where all dreams, good or bad, must depend on the death of a man?

Do you think Benethea should accept Asagai’s proposal of marriage and move to Africa?

Why does Walter decide to accept Lindner’s offer? How does Walter’s decision affect Mama?

At the end of the play, how have the Youngers changed? What remains the same?

Activity: Act 1, Scene 1

Directions: Read the introduction and draw a layout of the Younger apartment.

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A Raisin in the Sun: Act 1 Vocabulary

Word Definition Part of SpeechDefer To put off to a future timeDejection Depression or lowness in spiritsDispiritedly Gloomily, dejectedlyDoggedly Willfully, persistentlyErratic Deviating from the usual/proper course in conduct

or opinionExasperated To infuriateFutile Ineffective; useless; not successfulIndictment Any formal accusation of crimeIndifference Lack of interest or concernNeurotic Unusually anxious; emotionally unstableStupor DazeSullen Morose; dismal; gloomyvindicated Exonerated; to have one’s name cleared

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A Raisin in the Sun: Act 2 Vocabulary

Word Definition Part of SpeechDecisive Conclusive, finalDeplore To regret deeply or stronglyFacetious Not meant to be taken seriously or literallyImplore To beg urgently for aid or mercyLudicrous RidiculousPlaintively MournfullyRebuff An abrupt rejectiontentatively Hesitantly

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A Raisin in the Sun: Act 3 Vocabulary

Word Definition Part of SpeechDespise To regard with disgust; to loatheEntrepreneur A person who organizes and manages a businessIdealist A person who presents things as they might or

should be rather than as they areMirage Illusion; phantomPlunder To rob of goods or valuablesPrecariously Unsteadily, unsurely, unreliablyreverie A daydream

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