The people who surround Walter Lee are all trying to get him to adjust to the conditions of life for a Negro in a white man's world. All except Beneatha. Beneatha seeks her own escape first in a series of hobbies and fads, then in intellectualism and a desire to find her African roots.

All this is played against the backdrop of a society that is indifferently hostile to the aspirations of black folk in an environment of ignorance, lassitude, hate, filth and poverty. The Younger's apartment is an oasis wherein all of society's "good" values are being maintained with substantial assistance from the King James version….

If serious can be taken to mean earnest, deep, grave, sober, solemn, not joking or trifling, then we might say that the setting of A Raisin in the Sun is indeed appropriate to tragedy. The condition out of which the action...