A Raisin in the Sun

A Raisin in the Sun Summary | Act 1, Scene 1 Summary

A Raisin in the Sun is Lorraine Hansberry's seminal three-act play about an impoverished black family, set in Chicago's Southside neighborhood sometime between 1945 and 1959.

The setting is the dark family apartment, crowded with "tired" furniture protected with "acres of crocheted doilies." Although constantly cleaned, the apartment is a scene of weariness and poverty. The single main room (described as two in the landlord's lease) is a dingy, crowded combination living room/dining room/kitchen. Its only natural light is provided by a small window in the kitchen.

Offstage to the right, an alcove (a former breakfast room) serves as a bedroom for Ruth and Walter Lee. Their son, Travis, sleeps on a "make down bed" of pillow and blankets on the living room sofa. Offstage to the left is the single bedroom, shared by Mama and Walter Lee's sister Beneatha.

The bathroom, shared with other families on the same floor, is across the hall. The curtain rises on Friday at 7:30 a.m. as an alarm clock starts the Younger family about their morning routine. Ruth, a woman of about 30, enters from the sleeping alcove on the right wearing a housecoat.

She rouses her sleeping 10-year-old son, Travis, from his "make down" bed on the sofa, raises the kitchen window shade to admit a "dusky" light, and puts water on to boil. Calling Travis three times, she succeeds in getting him up, and he takes "today's clothes" and a towel across the hall to the communal bathroom.

Ruth starts breakfast, calling her husband Walter Lee from their alcove. After three shouts, he rises just as she is going into the sleeping alcove to fetch him. Walter Lee is "a young man around 35" and every word he says carries a "quality of indictment."

Feeling queasy, Ruth quickly wipes her face with a damp towel and finger combs her hair in an effort to make herself presentable before Walter Lee enters the kitchen. While Walter waits impatiently for Travis to get out of the bathroom, he asks Ruth, "Check coming today?"

She reminds him that the check is not to arrive until Saturday, the following day. She points out that the check - a $10,000 insurance payment on the death of his father, Walter Younger -- is not his. It belongs to Walter Lee's mother, Lena, called Mama by all.

Reading the Chicago Tribune, Walter discusses another bomb test and an article on the illness of the Tribune's owner, Robert McCormick. Ruth feigns an upper-class "tea party" concern for Colonel McCormick's health.

The Youngers continue to spar like many long-married couples, Walter complains about the wait for the bathroom, and Ruth chides him about keeping Travis up after 10 p.m. by entertaining his friends in the living room.

Ruth asks Walter how he wants his eggs and when he replies, "Any way but scrambled" she promptly begins to scramble them. Walter walks to the window, and remarks that in the morning light, just for a moment, Ruth looks like the young girl he married. She shushes him and gets back to work.

Travis returns, quickly summoning his father to the bathroom before the neighbors can slip in. Travis immediately asks about the awaited check, and then tells his mother he needs fifty cents for school today. His mother refuses, insisting they cannot afford it, and forbids him to ask his Grandmother.

Travis asks his mother if he can carry groceries at the supermarket after school to make pocket money. Ruth refuses, shushes Travis, and tells him to make his bed. Travis makes the bed sloppily, sulking. His mother chastises him for his "slubborn ways."

His mother brushes his hair and insists he wear a jacket, telling him to take carfare and milk money, "but not a dime for caps." Ruth teases a sullen Travis, mocking him affectionately until he hugs her and heads for the door.

Meeting his father at the door, Travis asks him for the fifty cents. His father responds by giving Travis the half-dollar, and another one to "buy some fruit or take a taxicab to school." Travis runs out the door overjoyed. Ruth is furious.

Walter reveals his latest scheme to get ahead - a $75,000 liquor store operation he proposes with his friends Willy and Bobo, requiring an initial investment of $10,000 each, plus a few hundred to expedite the liquor license. Ruth calls Willie a "good for nothing loud mouth" and objects to the "graft." Ruth meets each of Walter's imprecations with a variation of "Eat your eggs."

Walter insists that this is not a "fly-by-night" operation. He bemoans the fact that women don't understand the world, and the lack of emotional support from his wife. Their conversation deteriorates, with Ruth saying, "There are colored men who do things" accusingly, and Walter Lee responding, "No thanks to the colored woman."

Walter Lee's sister Beneatha enters from the bedroom on the left, which she shares with her mother. "Bennie" is twenty, slim, and her speech is more educated and less southern than Ruth's. Beneatha checks the bathroom across the hall, only to find it occupied by a member of the neighboring Johnson family.

Walter Lee objects to Beneatha's ambition to become a doctor, urging her to become a nurse or a wife "like a normal woman." He objects to some of the insurance being spent on Beneatha's education, and she responds that it's Mama's money, not his. Despite Beneatha's claim that she doesn't care how Mama spends the money, she seems supremely confident that the tuition for medical school will be available.

They continue to argue until Walter leaves for work. He proclaims all black women belong to "The world's most backwards race of people, and that's a fact." Walter slams the door on his way out, then meekly creeps back in, and asks Ruth for carfare - he has given all his money to Travis. Ruth gives him fifty cents and replies "teasingly but tenderly" - "Here -- take a taxi!"

Mama enters from the bedroom she shares with Beneatha, protesting the noise of Walter's exit. She checks a spindly plant she keeps on the windowsill. Noticing Ruth isn't feeling well, Mama makes her don a warm robe, and urges Ruth to stay home from work. Ruth declines, afraid she will lose her job as housekeeper to a white family.

Mama fixes Travis' sloppy bed-making, meanwhile chiding Ruth for not giving Travis a hot breakfast last week. Ruth makes her plea for Mama to invest the insurance check in Walter Lee's liquor store scheme, but Mama objects to liquor on religious grounds. Then Ruth urges "Miss Lena" to spend the money on herself, to take an exotic trip.

Mama discloses her plan to put part of the money away for Beneatha's education, and use the rest as a down payment on a house, so they can all get out of "this rat-trap." She and Big Walter moved into the apartment just two weeks after their marriage. They intended to live there for one year, then buy a little house with a garden in Morgan Park. As time passed, Big Walter became increasingly disappointed. When they lost a baby - "little Claude" - Big Walter became even more depressed, eventually working himself to death.

Mama becomes enraged when Beneatha claims God no longer exists. She exerts her authority as head of the family by insisting her college-educated daughter retract her statement, and admits that at least "in this house," God does still exist. The spirited Beneatha eventually succumbs to her mother's pressure.

The scene closes with Mama urging Ruth to sing a hymn, while the unsteady Ruth faints.