The play/novel A Raisin in the Sun, by Lorraine Hansberry is a very important piece of literature that represents African American people living through a life of social and economic inequalities. This book is meant to be taken place in a time after WW2, to present day. Hansberry’s writing conveys many messages hidden within the novel that not everyone may realize. For example, the role of money on the Younger family is of great importance being that they come from a life of poverty, and the role that money has on the characters varies for all the characters that were introduced to us in the first scene. In the first few pages of the novel, we are introduced to the role of money by ten-year-old Travis, when he says “Mama, this is Friday. (gleefully) Check coming tomorrow, huh” (Hansberry, pg 28). The fact that this young boy is aware of a check coming in the mail is a indication that money is scarce. In households, ten year olds generally don’t have a grasp on the importance of money, yet that is one of the first statements that Travis says. He then asks his mother, Ruth, for fifty cents for school, in which Ruth replied saying I don’t have any fifty cents to give you. Travis then goes on again to about the fifty cents wondering if he should ask his grandmother, Mama, for money, which Ruth shot down immediately, and then his father, Walter, which again she shut down. Fifty cents doesn’t seem to be a lot of money for most people, but the Youngers aren’t most people. They live in a small, crowded house where all the furniture is very worn. After Travis is done asking for the money for school he asks Ruth if he can go work at the grocery store after school, and Ruth shuts this idea down too. Again, keep in mind that Travis is a ten year old boy, which in my books is a very young age to be working, and it is clear that he has been doing it for some time now, so who really knows when he started working. Walter comes out of the bathroom and hears about what Travis wants to do and says that Ruth should let him go. Travis tells Walter that he needs to because Ruth won’t give him the fifty cents because she doesn’t have it. Walter says “What you tell the boy things like that for” and proceeds to give him the fifty cents and then an extra fifty cents to splurge on himself by either taking a taxi to school or buy some fruit (Hansberry, pg 31). In this scene we maybe get the feel that money isn’t as scarce as its being played off to be, but this isn’t the case because when Walter goes to leave for work, he realizes that he doesn’t have enough money and has to ask Ruth for fifty cents. In the novel Walter is shown to be very driven by money, it seems to be almost all he cares about. Before Walter had left to go to work, he an Ruth talked about an idea of Walters to open a liquor store with two of his other friends and needs to produce a downpayment of ten-thousand dollars, and he wants Ruth to talk to Mama about it, because that check that Travis had previously mentioned is actually belonging to Mama. Walter knows Mama wont listen to him as well as she would to Ruth. After their conversation the character Beneatha, Walters sister, is introduced. Beneatha is a strange character, because the whole novel seems to show how poor the family is, but Beneatha seems to be the one of only one who isn’t driven by money. Again the check is brought up when Walter tells Beneatha that the check is coming tomorrow, and Beneatha says that its Mamas money and she can do whatever she wants with it. Beneatha reassures herself as someone to be carefree of money, which I find this ironic because she seems to be spending the most of it. She is in college, and wants to go to medical school to be a doctor which means around eight years of school, and that type of schooling isn’t cheap. We then find out that she wants to take guitar lessons, in which Mama and Ruth question her because the year before she was taking acting lessons, and then before that she was taking horseback riding lessons, in which she apparently lost interest in all. These lessons most likely cost money and the family is clearly not well off enough for someone to be changing their mind about their hobbies. We also learn that Beneatha has been getting to know a man called George, and he is said to be a very wealthy man. Ruth believes that she should marry this man because of this fact and thinks that Beneatha is weird for not wanting to be with him for the money, reassuring that Beneatha isn’t money driven. Beneatha makes herself out to not have a care in the world about money, but she seems to be spending the most. Finally when Mama is introduced, we learn the amount the check is for, ten-thousand dollars, and why she’s getting this check, life insurance on her husband. Remember that Walter needs ten-thousand just for his deposit on the liquor store, and we don’t know if Walter has any money saved, so we would assume that Walter would need all the money. Mama states that she intends to lay out some money for Beneatha’s schooling, showing again that Beneatha is spending money, and that she wants no part in the idea of owning a liquor store and that Walter is no businessman. Ruth explains to Mama that no one is until they have a business, but then goes on to tell Mama that she should spend the money on herself and she should go see the world. So, we are shown that Ruth is also not entirely money driven and has the interests of everybody in her mind. Mama then throws the idea of her picking up some days to work, and it is not stated how old she is, but she is old enough to have a son in his mid-thirties, so I’d have to assume she is up there, and for her to go back to work just shows again how scarce money is for the family. Money is always going to have an important role in households, and especially for households that don’t have much. Money has a role on the family, but also has a role on the characters individually.
What character do you think is most directly influenced by the role of money?
Why do you think Beneatha’s character is not as influenced by money as the others, or if you think she is influenced by money, how?
Work cited
Hansberry, Lorraine. A Raisin in the Sun. Modern Library, 1995.
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