1959 Opening Reading Ewrt 2 Foothill College Lor

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1959 Opening Reading Ewrt 2 Foothill College Lor

Lorraine Hansberry—A Raisin in the Sun (1959):Opening Reading Questions—Act One, Scene One

Please answer the following questions as thoroughly as you can.Be sure to avoid consulting the Internet for your answers.It’s important to me that you are using your own voice, language, and approach as well as using the materials that I’ve given you in order to respond. We’re going to be reading and writing about the play by following the various themes at work in it, especially tracing how the play is in conversation with the issue of deferred dreams, as we’ve been studying in the Hughes and Brooks poems as well as in the Ellison essay.So, keep these previous readings in mind as you read and work to interpret the play.As indicated in the assignment schedule, these questions are due by the end of the day on Tuesday, April 28.I’m planning to post a video on Wednesday (once everyone’s questions are turned in) that goes over some of the introductory context and biography so that we’re ready to dive into the play together on Thursday.So, please plan to watch this video before class on Thursday and be sure to have the Perry essay and book on hand when you’re watching the video, as I’ll be referring to them and asking you to read along with me.

  • Lorraine Hansberry Biography:Use the introduction to the play as well as the Imani Perry essay to offer biographical details that are important to know about Hansberry’s life in general but that also help us understand how the play draws from her life.
  • History of Raisin’s Publication and Performance:Use the introduction to the play to explain the history of the play’s publication and performance.Explain the difficulties that the play faced in terms of getting on the stage.What were these difficulties, what do they indicate about society at the time, and what is significant about them being overcome?What was the misunderstanding surrounding the play’s meaning among critics?What was this critical debate about exactly?
  • Setting and Time Period of Play:Where and when is the play set?
  • Characters and Character Description:List and describe the major characters in the play.How does Hansberry introduce them?What are their attributes?How are they similar to and different from each other?Do these characters have “dreams deferred” that they are dealing with the consequences of or that they are actually pursuing?Answer this question in relation to every major character and include passages where you see evidence of a “dream deferred.”
  • Plot:What does the action of the play revolve around in this first scene?
  • Themes:As I said above, tracing various themes of the play will be the main way that we are going to interpret it and write about it.As you may know, a theme is a recurring idea of a text that the text is often posing as a complicated, significant issue; you can also think about a theme as an idea that a text is trying to dramatize in order to make meaning or communicate a meaning.One such example of an early theme of the play is the stress that results from the cramped conditions the Youngers live in (we could call the theme something like “the stress of cramped living conditions”).We see this on page 26-27 when Ruth and Walter Lee are fighting over whether or not their son, Travis, needs to get up earlier so that everyone in the family can get in and out of the shared bathroom in time to get to work, school, etc.As Walter Lee says to Ruth, “Now what is that boy doing in that bathroom all this time?He just going to have to start getting up earlier.I can’t be being late to work on account of him fooling around in there” (27).To this, Ruth doesn’t respond by agreeing with Walter Lee’s assessment; rather, she not only disagrees with Walter Lee but also scolds him in the process:“Oh, no he ain’t going to be getting up no earlier no such thing!It ain’t his fault that he can’t get to bed no earlier nights ‘cause he got a bunch of crazy good-for-nothing clowns sitting up running their mouths in what is supposed to be his bedroom after ten o’clock at night …” (27).So, as you can see here, Ruth is angry at Walter Lee for having his friends over the night before and keeping Travis up too late, and Walter Lee is frustrated at Travis for taking too long in the bathroom and not waking up early enough for him to get to work on time.At the heart of the conflict is that the family doesn’t have enough living space of their own.Travis’s bedroom is also the family’s living room; moreover, they have to share a bathroom with not only each other but also with other residents in the building.This cramped character of their living conditions is leading to lots of stress and anxiety that likely wouldn’t be there if they had more space.That this conflict is coming out of their living conditions suggests to us that this conflict isn’t something that is “natural” to the Younger family’s dynamic; rather, it is presented to us as a product of the material conditions that they find themselves in, which, as we learn from other parts of the play, are directly connected to the racism that they experience in the form of housing and job discrimination.

For this final section, I’d like you to choose two themes and explain them as I have done above and be sure to include passages that illustrate the theme, too.Take some time to close read the passages so as to begin to figure out what the themes mean and why they are significant.