The subject matter of A Raisin in the Sun may make it appear outdated. The action taking place in what now seems like a long past time—the days before Black Power, antiwar protests, student uprisings and black rebellions. The play concerns itself with the Younger family: Mama Younger, who has survived and won; her son, Walter, the pivotal character of the play, the black male castrated by the blade of the American dream but who blames the castration on his wife; Ruth, Walter's wife, who sees the wound and is unable to stanch the bleeding and, like her Biblical namesake, can say, "Whither thou goest, I will go"—but Walter will not lead; Beneatha, Walter's sister, a college student, a black militant in a day before there was a name for her; and, Joseph Asagai, an African student, with a vision of a black-ruled Africa. Within one apartment, Lorraine Hansberry capsulized so much of black life on a myriad of levels. Here is the black male-black female conflict presented in all its painful rawness in Walter and Ruth; and here too is a history of black women, all of them beautiful in totally different ways, all of them strong in totally different ways. (pp. 4-5)
Walter has been taught that he should want the world, but because he is black he has been denied the possibility of ever having it. And that only makes the pain of the desire that much more hurting…. But Mama Younger has not let America define her. She has defined herself. (p. 7)
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