A Rainbow After The Rain

Black playwright Lorraine Hansberry's (1930-1965) best known staged drama, A Raisin in the Sun (1959), presents the theme that the Youngers who are tormented by the racial segregation fight with the white racists in social space, psychological space, residential space and cultural space, to move into their own house, gain"equal social rights", find their cultural identity and race pride in the end. What will be applied in this thesis as a thematic instrument is Spatial Criticism theory. The white using their absolute space power not only make black individuals lose position in social space, but also black families lost their residential space, which results in spatial depression inside their families. However, the loss of existential space undoubtedly gives rise to the desegregation struggle for equal space. The pursuit of cultural and psychological space helps the Youngers regain race pride and confidence, which functions as strength source and spiritual support for their struggle in social and residential space. The practice of the Youngers'struggle for existential space manifests that the modern racial relationships among space, power, and race are interwoven and interaction─The possession of social space closely relates to the development and future of a race, moreover, it also manifests that existential space for Afro-Americans is not something be given but something being created.