In A Raisin In The Sun the Younger family lives in Chicago on the south side in a small two bedroom apartment. Walter Lee Younger is the son of Lena and Walter Younger, whom are the original tenants of the apartment that the Youngers now reside in. The current tenants of the apartment are Walter Lee, his wife Ruth, his sister and his mother Beneatha and Lena, and his son Travis. Poverty is the only reality that the Younger family knows, and Walter lets this truth drive his very existence and leads him to some rather bad business decisions.
The major theme of this play is the value and purpose of dreams. Walter's continued existence is the struggle to escape the poverty that he was born with. He spends countless hours talking with men in similar situations trying to come up with ideas that would effectively remove them from poverty and into upper-class wealth and society. The rest of the family doesn't agree with his ideas of buying liquor stores due to some stern Christian values instilled into them by Mama. When the family gets an insurance check for ten thousand dollars everyone in the family has their own idea about how to spend the money. In the end Mama, who's money it was to begin with, decided to do what she thought was best for the family which was buy a house and move away from the wretched apartment that had consumed her husband. This decision in effect destroyed Walter in a way unimaginable. It crushed his spirit because the only people he needed support from in his endeavors were not offering. Another theme of the lay was the need to fight racial discrimination. The character of Mr. Lindner acted as a foil to true happiness that the Younger family was hoping for in their new house when he effectively told them that his neighborhood didn't want black people to live in the neighborhood. the offer that the community made to offer to buy the home shows just how far some people will go to remain in ignorance of all things that are different.