Section B: NON AFRICAN DRAMA LORRAINE HANSBERRY - A Raisin In The Sun Discuss the living conditions of the Younger family.

Answer Details

The living conditions of the Younger family are central to Lorraine Hansberry's A Raisin in the Sun, for the cramped, worn apartment in which they exist is both the visible sign of their poverty and the pressure that shapes every dream and quarrel in the play.

A small, overcrowded flat. The Youngers, five people spanning three generations, are squeezed into a tiny apartment on the South Side of Chicago. Mama and Beneatha share one bedroom, Walter and Ruth another, and young Travis has no room of his own at all; he sleeps on a make-down bed on the living-room couch. The space is far too small for the number of people it holds.

Shabby, ageing furniture. Hansberry's stage directions stress that the furnishings, once chosen with care and hope, are now tired and overworked. The upholstery is faded, a doily and covers hide the wear, and the whole room speaks of a family that has struggled for years and seen its hopes dulled by "a small area of living" that gives nothing back.

Shared facilities and lack of privacy. The family shares a bathroom down the hall with other tenants, so that the morning routine is a scramble to reach it first. The single window admits only a little light, and Ruth must battle roaches. There is no privacy for anyone, which sharpens the friction between Walter and Ruth and between the generations.

Effect on the family. These conditions are not merely a background; they are a cause of tension. Walter's frustration and sense of failed manhood, Ruth's weariness (and her anguished thought of ending her pregnancy), and the family's fierce longing for the new house all grow directly out of this suffocating environment. The apartment embodies the "dream deferred" of poor black families in mid-century America.

Conclusion. The living conditions of the Youngers, overcrowded, worn and lacking in privacy, dramatise the family's poverty and the racial and economic barriers they face. It is precisely the wretchedness of this home that makes Mama's purchase of a house, and the family's determination to claim it, so powerful at the play's end.