A Raisin in the Sun 5

A Raisin in the Sun
Lorraine Hansberry

I really enjoyed this play, but it's kind of hard for me to read a play and not being able to see it performed.  The stage directions help, but it's just not the same.  They did, however, allow me to visualize what was happening.  I really liked some of the directions because they were pretty funny and so low-key.  Several times, Hansberry used phrases like "no particular age" and "not much of a deceptive type" (Hansberry, page 99).  These are really a vital rhetorical strategy, even though they are not actually dialogue in they play.  I would argue that the italicized words are sometimes more important than what the characters are saying because they offer bits of the other senses which really enhance the story.  The play may be very different when acted on a stage, but by reading the A Raisin in the Sun, we can visualize exactly what Hansberry wanted to write and how she wanted it to come across to the audience.
      I want to wrap up this play with a comment about "A Dream Deferred" by Langston Hughes which was at the beginning of the book.  I don't know if Lorraine Hansberry originally included it as a prelude to the play or if Robert Nemiroff included it in this production, but I feel that it is very important to the plot and major themes of the play.  I talks about an important dream that is deferred, and Walter's dream was indefinitely deferred in "A Raisin in the Sun."  However, Mama realized her dream of living among the white people in a more upper-scale house, and I like to think that Beneatha accomplishes her dream of becoming a doctor and hopefully goes to Africa with Asagai to practice medicine.