A Raisin in the Sun

     As I began to read A Raisin in the Sun by Lorraine Hansberry, one literary technique stood out to me almost immediately, diction. Hansberry uses diction in this play to reveal to the audience the social class and the true character of each person in the story. The poorly constructed sentences with many errors reveal to the audience that this is an under-educated family. Had I not known from the introduction that it is set  in Chicago, I would have assumed, based on their speech habits, that they are southern. Because the play is set in the 1950's and from small innuendos throughout the script, the reader knows this is a lower class african-american family. Mama says "something always told me I wasn't no rich white woman" (Hansberry, 451). This quote not only verifies her race, but it is one of many examples of the uneducated diction used in the play. The play illustrates the struggles many african-americans faced during the Civil Rights Movement. Many of these people, like the younger family, lived in poverty. This play seems interesting me because I am eager to find out what a family in this bad situation will do when they run into a large sum of money.