With the success in 1959 of A Raisin in the Sun, Lorraine Hansberry became the first black woman to win the New York Drama Critics Circle Award for the best American play. This, her first play, was also the first by a black woman to be produced on Broadway.
The characters in Hansberry's play A Raisin in the Sun are Universal in their Attempts to achieve their dreams. They are like every man and woman in that they have vices as well as virtues (Driver 182). In fact, they are "attractive and convincingly real people" (Miller 188).
Lorraine Hansberry's success with her characters is, I think, accomplished through her ability to make us become very interested in every one of them from the beginning, and as each assumes his identity the interest is consistently maintained. Each person is clearly individualized and none are able to dominate others (Miller 188).
One of the characters who is individualized is Ruth, she brings peace to the house all the time. Even when things are in a critical situation, she is always there to assist everyone. But Ruth has weaknesses too, she gets carried away by their economic situation and this leads her to plan an abortion.
The play is a problem play, and the problem is blackness in a white society. The underlying humanity of the characters, however, and the decency of their struggle because and in spite of their blackness, will prevent the dream from drying up (Miller 189).
It is a play about human beings who want, on the one hand, to preserve their family pride and, on the other hand, to break out the poverty that seems to be their fate (Brooks 182).
Beneatha has pride in her person, during the play she shows and expresses her pride in various ways. The struggle and the pressure from her mother makes her express that pride in an ignorant way. Although Beneatha knows that she was raised under a strong Christian Religion, she makes a mistake when she says that "God does not makes miracles, humans make miracles".
