A Raisin in the Sun Character Map

CHARACTER MAP

Walter Younger, Sr. (Deceased)

Lena Younger (Mama)

Beneatha Younger

George Murchison Joseph Asagai

Bobo

Walter Lee Younger Ruth Younger

Travis Younger

Willy Harris

Karl Lindner

Walter Younger, Sr. (Deceased) DREAM: A better life for his children. “He sure loved his children. Always wanted them to have something— be something,” Lena describes, remembering how he used to say, “Seem like God didn’t see fit to give the black man nothing but dreams—but He did give us children to make the dreams seem worthwhile.” WHAT HE SACRIFICED: His life. Lena says she, “seen him grow thin and old before he was forty— working and working and working like somebody’s old horse—killing himself!”

WHAT HE DIDN’T: His pride. Walter Lee draws inspiration from his father when he ultimately rejects Lindner’s offer, saying, “my father almost beat a man to death once because this man called him a bad name or something. [...] We are very proud people.”

Lena Younger (Mama) DREAM: A house of their own with a garden. “You should know all the dreams I had ’bout buying that house and fixing it up and making me a little garden in the back,” she says. WHAT SHE’LL SACRIFICE: Her safety. She buys a house in a white neighborhood, knowing they may face harassment, because she “just tried to find the nicest place for the least amount of money for my family.”

WHAT SHE WON’T: Her children. She entrusts the remaining money— including Beneatha’s education funds—to Walter Lee when she sees how embittered he is becoming with no means to pursue his dreams. She tells him: “There ain’t nothing as precious to me—there ain’t nothing worth holding on to, money, dreams, nothing else—if it means—if it means it’s going to destroy my boy.” In supporting him, she even sets aside her reservations about selling liquor, which her religious beliefs discourage.

Beneatha Younger DREAM: Becoming a doctor. “I always thought it was the one concrete thing in the world that a human being could do,” she says, “Fix up the sick, you know—and make them whole again. This was truly being God.” WHAT SHE’LL SACRIFICE: Money. Beneatha refuses the affections of her wealthy suitor, George Murchison.

WHAT SHE WON’T: Her freedom. Beneatha loves to “experiment with different forms of expression,” as she searches for her identity: she picks up hobbies from horseback riding to guitar, dates multiple young men with no intention of rushing into marriage, and cuts off her processed hair to embrace itsnatural texture. A NEW DREAM? At the end of the play, Beneatha is considering Joseph Asagai’s proposal that she marry him, move with him to Nigeria, and practice medicine there— an evolution of her childhood dream.

Walter Lee Younger DREAM: Success. “I want so many things that they are driving me kind of crazy,” says Walter Lee. Dissatisfied with his job as a chauffeur, he dreams of opening a liquor store—which he hopes will be a launchpad to greater wealth and power. WHAT HE’LL SACRIFICE: The money, his common sense, and his dignity. He gives his untrustworthy business partner Willy all the money—including money promised for Beneatha’s education—to kickstart the business. When Willy runs off with the money, his con devastates Walter Lee. Now convinced morality is a mere distraction from the cycle of taking or being “tooken” that drives the world, Walter Lee decides to accept Lindner’s money and even plans to perform his own personal minstrel show.

WHAT HE WON’T: His father’s pride. Throughout the play, Walter Lee seems ambitious and unscrupulous, as if there is little he wouldn’t sacrifice. When his mother challenges his obsession with money, he retorts that “money is life.” But when he faces Lindner at the end of the play, he finally chooses pride in his family instead. “We have decided to move into our house,” he says, “because my father—my father—he earned it for us, brick by brick.”

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Joseph Asagai One of Beneatha’s suitors: a visiting college student from Nigeria.

DREAM: Revolution. To return to Nigeria and overthrow colonial rule and improve lives he now sees plagued by “illiteracy and disease and ignorance”—with Beneatha by his side as his wife. WHAT HE’LL SACRIFICE: His life. He understands that change might be violent— and he’s willing to “be butchered in my bed some night by the servants of empire.”

George Murchison One of Beneatha’s suitors: a fellow college student from a wealthy African American family.

DREAM: Status. To sustain—or even further—his family’s status and wealth by earning a college degree, frequenting cultural events like the theater, and wearing stylish clothes—all with a girl on his arm. WHAT HE’LL SACRIFICE: Authenticity. He is more interested in a degree than an education, saying: “It’s simple, you read books—to learn facts—to get grades— to pass the course—to get a degree. That’s all—it has nothing to do with thoughts.”

Karl Lindner A representative from the ironically named “welcoming committee” of the family’s prospective new neighborhood, Clybourne Park.

DREAM: Maintaining his all-white neighborhood, or as he euphemizes: “The kind of community we want to raise our children in.”

WHAT HE’LL SACRIFICE: Money. He and others from his neighborhood have pooled money to buy the house back from the Younger family for more than they paid. WHAT HE WON’T: Decency—or so he claims. He clings to his selfconception as a decent man, insisting “that race prejudice simply doesn’t enter into it” and even claiming he’s working for the greater good, since he believes everyone’s happier living among folks from a “common background.”

Bobo A friend of Walter Lee’s, Bobo partners with him and Willy Harris to open a liquor store.

DREAM: The liquor store. WHAT HE’LL SACRIFICE: His savings. He puts it all on the line, and like Walter, he’s financially ruined by Willy’s con. WHAT HE WON’T: Decency. Hansberry emphasizes that “Bobo is not a con-man but a victim,” just like Walter, and his choice to go to Walter to let him know what happened “is an act of great courage.”