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A Raisin In The Sun took place in the South side of Chicago between 1940 and 1960. During this period, a large number of African Americans migrated from the South to Chicago in search of a better living condition and new jobs, which resulted in many housing and race problems in the state. Since white people wanted to prevent African Americans from entering their community, they formed the “restrictive covenants”, which prohibited house owners from renting or selling houses to black people. This led to overcrowding and poor housing conditions because many black families had to flock into one tight area. Their apartments often had limited space and no bathroom, with all the occupants in one building sharing a single hall unit. Moreover, white people also maltreated black people due to racism and social discrimination. From their perspectives, African Americans were inferior to them both physically and intellectually; or worse, they saw black people as their servants.
Hansberry has reflected on this situation in A Raisin In The Sun and describes how this setting affected Walter and Benetha, the two main characters. The Younger family, consisting of 5 members, lived in an old apartment. The furnishings in this apartment had shown some signs of weariness because they had to “accommodate the living of too many people for too many years”. Travis, Walter's son, had to sleep in the living room because there were only 2 bedrooms; and Beneatha was sometimes frustrated due to the shared bathroom in the building. Therefore, Walter and Beneatha both formed their dream to seek a better environment.
For Walter, he felt trapped in this tiny apartment with a poor family and a low-income job. He was a chauffeur for a white man, which was no different from a servant. Walter believed that money was the only solution to the family's problem, which led to his dream of opening a liquor business and becoming rich so that he could support his family and provide his son with a better future. Hansberry used Walter to represent the ambitious but uninformed African Americans at that time. The family destitution had motivated his dream, but Walter was not educated enough to be thoughtful in making decisions. He was willing to put all of the money that Mama gave him into Willy Harris, a person that he didn't know much about. In that amount of insurance money, there was also Beneatha's portion as Mama wanted to support her dream of studying in a medical school. However, with a selfish thought that black women should stay at home and support their men in the family, Walter gave all the money away without considering his sister.
On the other hand, Beneatha was the most educated member of the Younger family. Unlike Ruth, who barely raised her voice in the family, Beneatha wasn't afraid of expressing her opinions on gender roles, religion, and racism. In particular, she held a modern view of gender roles, which was opposite to Walter's. She believed that men and women should be equal; and she had the right to follow her dream of becoming a doctor, which was considered taboo for her status. Beneatha expected her family to pay for her tuition but didn't care much about her family's setbacks. However, Beneatha was more thoughtful than the other Youngers. Although the family wanted her to marry George due to his richness, she chose Asagai as she took pride in her identity and identified much more with Asagai’s desire to discover their African origin than with George's desire to assimilate into white culture.
The setting of A Raisin In The Sun strongly affected Beneatha and Walter in many ways. They had different views regarding education, gender roles, and culture. They had different dreams, but they shared one thing in common, which was putting their dreams above others. In other words, they were willing to fight for their dreams as they believed that those dreams would bring them a better future.
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