It examines dreams, racism, family tension and dignity.
A Raisin in the Sun by Lorraine Hansberry is a play set for IGCSE and International GCSE Literature (OxfordAQA 9275). The board decides the set texts and the years they are examined, and your school confirms them. Our teachers teach whichever text your child sits.
What it is
The Youngers share a cramped apartment on Chicago's South Side. When Mama, the matriarch, receives a cheque from her late husband's insurance policy, each family member has a different idea of how to spend it. Her son Walter Lee wants to invest in a liquor store, her daughter Beneatha dreams of becoming a doctor, and Mama wishes to buy a house with a garden.
She makes a down payment on a home in a white neighbourhood, and the family is faced with prejudice from the community. A betrayal over money tests them severely, and the play ends with a decision about pride and the future.
Themes and ideas to track
Dreams deferred
The title, taken from a poem, asks what happens to postponed hopes. Each character's dream is shaped by the limits placed on them.
Race and housing discrimination
The family's wish to move into a white neighbourhood exposes systemic prejudice. The play presents it as both public and personal.
Family, generations and gender
Mama, Walter Lee, Beneatha and Ruth hold different views about money, work and women's roles. The play explores conflict and love within a family.
Identity, pride and dignity
Characters struggle with what it means to be proud and independent. The ending stresses dignity over money.
How the writer builds it
Hansberry builds the play around a single cramped setting, using props such as Mama's plant to carry symbolic meaning. Realistic dialogue mixes humour and anger, and different characters voice competing ideas about progress and identity. Conflict escalates through well-timed scenes, and the structure moves toward a decisive confrontation.
Music and gesture add emotional nuance. Notice how the apartment's limits mirror the family's constraints, and how the plant stands for hope.
A teacher can practise essay planning on A Raisin in the Sun with your child in a one-hour trial.
How to write about it in the exam
Choose key scenes, such as the arrival of the cheque and the meeting with the neighbourhood representative, and analyse how dialogue and staging build tension. Discuss symbols, particularly the plant and the apartment, as dramatic devices.
Make an argument about how the play shapes an audience's sympathies instead of summarising. Short references are enough, and each should be followed by explanation.
An exam-style question to practise
How does Hansberry present the dreams of different members of the Younger family?
Plan three points before you write, with a short quotation for each. Then check your plan against the mark scheme section below.
More question angles
- Explore the ways Hansberry presents racism in the play.
- How does Hansberry use Mama as a character?
- Discuss the significance of setting and symbolism in the play.
How this maps to the mark scheme
Examiners mark Literature answers against assessment objectives. These are the skills the paper rewards. For OxfordAQA 9275, the objectives are summarised on our qualification page.
- AO1: Understanding of, and engagement with, themes, ideas and contexts
- AO2: Analysis of how writers create meanings and effects
For A Raisin in the Sun, build your argument around “Dreams deferred” and “Race and housing discrimination”. Support each point with a short quotation. Then analyse the writer's method, using the section above.
Keep context about Lorraine Hansberry brief and tied to the words on the page.
Read the text alongside these notes. This page is our own analysis and original teaching material. We quote at most a short attributed phrase where a point needs it, so keep your copy of the play open as you read.
Where to go next
Plan your essay with our guide to planning a literature essay, then see a worked answer in our literature essay structure model response. Browse more set-text notes or read about Literature in English tuition.
When you have written an answer on A Raisin in the Sun, a paid one-hour trial lesson lets the teacher who would continue mark it with you.