Research Paper on:
Lorraine Hansberry's 'A Raisin in the Sun' and Eternal Hope

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hit, but also it marked one of the first times the stage had been used to delve realistically into the plight of the American black family, circa 1950. That its  themes and characters are still relevant and emotionally charged today, some 43 years after it was first produced, is both testament to Hansberrys grasp of her craft and ironic commentary  on the state of black-white American affairs as we come well and truly into the 21st century. Nevertheless, Raisin is, paradoxically, a play about hope, about the earnest (if somewhat  na?ve at times) belief all these problems can be overcome. Thesis Hansberrys thesis is twofold. First, the play was written to fill a void in American theatrical life in which  African-Americans and American societys mistreatment were glossed over, minimized, or, more often, ignored. The play, then, first presents the circumstances in which all too many inner-city black families found themselves:  the grinding poverty, racism, joblessness, injustice and, above all, hopelessness. It is a system seemingly designed to grind down and subjugate individual personality and aspiration, to produce a fatalistic bitterness,  or at least apathy. Many more radical black and progressive white writers before and since Hansberry have left it there-the system, as it is, is corrupt and dehumanizing, and in  fact deliberately so. Hansberry does not leave it there, however. Though the play seems to be going headlong in that direction for much of its length, its final (and overriding)  message is one of hope. In the end, though the setbacks seem crushing and (most of) the characters are tempted to give in to despair and fatalism, it is love  and moral principle that save the day. It is through the support of the black family structure, which seemed at times to be on the verge of collapsing, that the