1. Describe the setting and consider its relevance to the action of the play. In the initial stage directions, the layout of the small apartment is given as wells as details of how worn the furnishings are. The play never moves from this central living room, which is also a bedroom for Travis, and the …
Lorraine Hansberry, African-American playwright, was born into a relatively wealthy-middle class family in Chicago in 1930 and was raised with the belief in fighting for injustice. She studied at the University of Wisconsin for two years and moved to New York in 1950 to study and then write. She married in 1953 and separated in …
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Its furnishings are typical and undistinguished and their primary feature now is that they have clearly had to accommodate the living of too many people for too many years – and they are tired. p. 53 This reference is part of the stage directions in Act One Scene One and describes the Youngers’ living room. …
Divisive effects of racism The barriers between generations and the sexes are referred to several times in this domestic drama and are reviled as weakening the bonds between the family members. Mama points out that something has come between her and her children and Walter notes the same is happening between him and Ruth. These …
Insurance money The play opens with references to when the check for this insurance will come and is a central motif. Its arrival instigates happiness and anger and is also the means by which Hansberry is able to denote betrayal when Willy Harris steals Walter and Beneatha’s share. The constant early references to it are …
Beneatha Younger Beneatha is the educated daughter of Lena and sister of Walter. She hopes to become a doctor, but her ambition is undermined when the money for her medical school fees is stolen. Bobo This is a minor character. He is a friend of Walter and he comes to the apartment to inform him …
Summary – Act Three, Scene OneIt is an hour later and there is a gray light in the room; it resembles that which began the first scene in Act One. Walter is alone in his room and is laid on his bed and Beneatha is in the living room. The bell rings and she admits …
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Summary – Act Two, Scene ThreeIt is Saturday and this is the day the family is due to move. Before the curtain rises, Ruth’s voice can be heard: ‘Oh Lord, I don’t feel no ways tired! Children, oh, glory hallelujah!’ When the curtain rises, Ruth is in the living room packing and Beneatha enters and …
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Summary – Act Two, Scene OneIt is later the same day. Ruth is ironing and Beneatha comes out of her bedroom wearing the Nigerian clothes. She turns off the radio saying, ‘enough of this assimilationist junk!’ and Ruth’s eyes follow her as she puts a record on. Beneatha’s eyes are ‘far away – “back to …
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Summary – Act Two, Scene TwoThis scene is set on a Friday night and it is a few weeks later. There are packing crates in the living room and these mark the fact that the family is moving.Beneatha and George enter and they have been out for the evening. She wants to talk and he …
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