Three Generations of Personalities in One Household

Lorraine Hansberry’s “A Raisin in the Sun” is a play that depicts the strong will of the Youngers, an African-American family, who overcome racial discrimination and economic hardship while living in the south side of Chicago during the 1950’s. Within the Younger household there are three generations of women who each have a distinct personality to bring to the table. Mama, who is in her sixties, is the head of the household, Ruth, who is in her thirties, is married to Mama’s son Walter and is the mother of Travis, and Beneatha, the youngest of the three in her twenties, is going to school to pursue a career as a doctor. All three of these women are beautiful and strong in their separate ways. Because they are independent and strong-willed, their personalities all complement yet contradict each other. The younger women’s diverse yet comparable personalities were shaped by popular media and events during their young adulthoods in three different generations: the 1920’s, the 1940’s and the 1950’s.
While Mama and Beneatha are the furthest apart in age and seem to have the most conflict within the women of the house, they still have common values and characteristics. The most prominent example within the play is their respect and pride for the past. Beneatha does not have so much pride for generational family values as she does for her deep roots in Africa. Within a heated conversation she has with George after he has seen her in traditional African robes, she states that George is an “assimilationist” (1153). By saying this she is implying that George does not care about his heritage and just wants to conform to the current white world they live in. She sees this as betrayal and ignorance. Mama, on the other hand, came from a famil...

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...character with qualities of her own as well. During most of the time the play was written and when it was produced, Hansberry herself was in her thirties, as Ruth was. Ruth was the middle ground of the three women, sharing personality traits with both Mama and Beneatha. Hansberry most likely wrote Ruth and Beneatha with traits from her past, in Beneatha, and her present, in Ruth. As far as Mama’s character development source, I say that Hansberry was basing her off her own mother, or even grandmother. The play written was based off an event that actually happened within her life, as noted by the author of “Literature for Composition” on page 1127, and Hansberry drew from that experience to help her develop the story. This is one reason why so many people praised it portraying a true African-American family; she wrote the characters after herself and family members.