The Ideas of Segregation and Oppression in The Play a Raisin in The Sun by Lorraine Hansberry

Segregation and oppression were prevalent ideas in the mid twentieth century. Numerous blacks, while free, were forced into conditions they did not agree with, but they found joy in the little things that gave them hope. In Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun, she uses several household objects as symbols to show the oppression and segregation of an African-American family living in Southside Chicago. These objects, while they may not be obvious at first, are inherent ideas in the whole play and play a key role in showing the intensity of the family’s oppression.

The little houseplant is mentioned several times in the play as is a symbol that is used to make a direct correlation to the youngers. At the start of the play, the plant is frail and weak due to the lack of sunlight it receives and its lack of other resources. Although Mama tries to take care of the plant with tender, loving care, it just cannot manage because there is no way for it to grow strong in the space it is contined to. The Youngers also live in a confined apartment and have no space to grow because of housing market preventing them from living anywhere else. The use of this symbol makes the reader understand that, just as the plant, the younger family is surviving only on their basic needs being met. They have to work just to keep themselves off the street while the white men can do what they please.

Just as the Youngers are about to leave for their new home. Both Walter and Travis give gifts to Mama which act as different symbols to show the hope the family has. But also the true oppression they are experiencing, Walter’s gift of the sparkly, new gardening tools is a symbol of hope to the family. When Mama opens the present, it is the first present in her life without it being Christmas,” (123) which makes the point of just how important these tools really are to her. With these tools, Mama can begin to fulfill her dream of a larger garden in the yard of the new home, Travis’ gift to Mama, the gardening hat, can be viewed as a symbol for the family’s still underlying oppression. When Travis gives her the hat, he tells Mama that she can be “like the ladies… in the magazines” (124). These magazines are filled with white, not colored, women, so in reality, Mama can never be like those women. Through the use of this cultural divide. Not only is the family’s oppression shown, but African-American oppression in general. While Travis feels that the hat is a symbol of hope, it is awkwardly fitting and the rest of the family thinks she looks ridiculous wearing it. The use of the hat as a symbol shows how even. Though the Youngers feel happy because of their move into the white neighborhood, oppression in present for them.

Ideas of segregation and oppression were prevalent throughout the whole play; however, hope was also added. The symbols Hansberry uses to express these elements are seen at many times, and usually are recurring. The symbol of the plant shows the family’s survival in their terrible conditions, the gardening tools can be seen as a piece of hope in a tough time, and the gardening hat shows the underlying oppression that is present in a state of happiness. While the Youngers have managed to separate themselves from the normal black families living in poverty, they have hardly managed to climb to the next rung on the social ladder.

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