Section B: NON AFRICAN DRAMA LORRAINE HANSBERRY - A Raisin In The Sun Compare George Murchison’s and Karl Linder’s attitudes to the Younger family.

Answer Details

In Lorraine Hansberry's A Raisin in the Sun, George Murchison and Karl Lindner are both outsiders to the Younger household, and comparing their attitudes reveals two different but related forms of contempt that the family must confront: one rooted in class, the other in race.

George Murchison: contempt rooted in class. George is a wealthy, educated young black man who courts Beneatha. His attitude toward the Youngers is one of condescension. He looks down on their modest circumstances and, more sharply, on Beneatha's intellectual seriousness and her interest in African heritage, dismissing her ideas and telling her he wants a girl who is decorative rather than thoughtful. He also treats Walter with a superior air, mocking his ambitions. George represents the assimilated, materialistic middle class that has distanced itself from ordinary black struggle, and his snobbery wounds the family from within their own race.

Karl Lindner: contempt rooted in race. Lindner, the representative of the Clybourne Park Improvement Association, approaches the Youngers with outward politeness but a fundamentally exclusionary purpose. He offers to buy back their new house to keep a black family out of a white neighbourhood. His courtesy masks the racism of the community he speaks for, and his proposal is a direct assault on the family's dignity and their right to belong.

Points of comparison. Both men regard the Youngers as beneath them and both, in effect, try to keep the family in a lower place. George does so through personal condescension and cultural dismissal; Lindner does so through institutional, racially motivated exclusion. Both are also polite on the surface, so that their contempt is delivered without open hostility. In each case the family, and particularly Walter, must decide whether to submit to the humiliation offered.

Points of contrast. George is black and his prejudice is one of class and self-image; Lindner is white and his prejudice is one of race. George's slight is personal and cultural, while Lindner's is social and economic, backed by a whole community. Significantly, the family's rejection of both, capped by Walter's refusal of Lindner's money, marks the Youngers' assertion of pride and identity.

Conclusion. George Murchison and Karl Lindner function as parallel tests of the Youngers' self-respect. Their attitudes, though springing from class and race respectively, both express contempt for the family, and the Youngers' rejection of both affirms the play's central theme of dignity in the face of belittlement.