Q) How does Hansberry make the apartment where the Younger Family lives such an important part of the play?
A) Lorraine Hansberry’s “A Raisin In The Sun” is a broadway play that revolves around the financial distress that an african american family living in the south of chicago is subjected to as a result of the racial divide. Hansberry tactfully uses symbolism and stage setting while establishing the setting as a small apartment to underscore the cardinal themes of dreams, racial segregation and penury.
Hansberry uses a wide progression of images and descriptions to emphatically depict the family’s substandard monetary status. The family of five is shown to be living in a two bedroom house, with a single bathroom that is shared between two families and the meagre space indicates that the family is far from being prosperous. Walter’s son, Travis sleeps on the couch in the living room, which also acts as the dining room. This scarcity of area signifies their struggle to procuring any semblance of a satisfactory standard of living due to their indigence. Furthermore, descriptions like “furniture are typical and undistinguished” shows how their furniture is of the poorest quality and most substandard cost whereas visual images in “worn-out furniture” and “thread bore carpet” evince how the family cannot properly preserve even the small amount of furniture in their house, owing to their lack of prosperity. These descriptions of the apartment are crucial in instituting the themes of poverty, for not only does the weariness display their inability to afford for pleasant-looking furniture but the claustrophobia insinuates how the family feels confined, physically as well as mentally as their state of poverty restricts them from their costly aspirations in life.
Symbolism and metaphors are deployed deftly when describing the apartment and the stage setting. The plant in the living room is malnourished, owing to there being only a “single window” in the house from which light may enter. The paucity of sunlight and its detrimental impact on the plant is a direct representation of the how scarcely the family manages to lead a normal life due to racial and financial limitations. Therefore, the feeble plant links to the members of the family that are devoid of hope, and Mama routinely watering the plant signifies that she is the sole figure that nurtures the family to help them persevere through the hardships. Moreover Ruth refers to the house as a “rat-trap”. This metaphor suggests how entrapped the family feels inside this house, hence highlighting themes of disillusionment and poverty.
The neighbourhood that the apartment is situated in is pivotal in accentuating the themes of the play. The African-American family lives in the south of chicago, a predominantly black locality. This expresses how the blacks were ostracised in the 1950s and evinces the racial divide that pervaded in America back then, because of which African Americans were subjected to being placed far away from the posh locality of the whites. Consequently, Hansberry uses the setting to amplify the theme of racism that is integral in this play.
Lastly, the house is a depiction of the family’s struggles, for their condition only deteriorates when they are confined inside a house, while complying with the norms set by the whites. However, as they transcend the barriers set around them due to the prevalent racism and move to Clybourne Park, a predominantly white neighbourhood, a new beam of hope illuminates their previously dejected spirits, and consequently the significant themes of hope and pride are underlined.
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