“What happens to a dream deferred? Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun? Or fester like a sore--And then run.” In Lorraine Hansberry’s play A Raisin in the Sun it portrays a few weeks in the life of the Youngers, an African-American family living on the South Side of Chicago in the 1950s. The title of the play references a conjecture that Langston Hughes famously posed in a poem he wrote about dreams that were forgotten or put off. There are four main characters in the play, Mama (Lena Younger), Walter Younger, Beanetha Younger, and Ruth Younger. Each of the main characters in the story expresses their opinions about what they want and need or wish to have, due to their struggles in everyday life. All of the characters in the Younger family each have a different dream they want to fulfill. One wants to move to a bigger home, one wants to attend medical school, one wants to rise above his conditions though does not necessarily have a plan to do so. Each Character dream serves an important psychological function (hope, motivation, direction). A Raisin in the Sun is essentially about dreams, as the main characters struggles to deal with the oppressive circumstances that rule their lives.

Mama Younger, the matriarch of the family, is religious, moral, and maternal. She wants to use her husband’s insurance money as a down payment on a house with a backyard to fulfill her dream for her family to move up in the world. Throughout the story you see Mama’s character as one who is proud and has pride within herself and her family. Mama Younger displays the needs of safety, belongingness and love needs, and esteem needs. Throughout the play Mama has expressed a lot of esteem needs. For example when she says on page 140 of the play “son—I come from five generations of people who was slaves and sharecroppers—but ain’t nobody in my family never let nobody pay’em no money that