Hansberry, in her seminal work A Raisin in the Sun, draws upon all of her characters to tell not only their story, but the collective story of the disenfranchised African-American man. Here, the elder Mr. Younger, as outlined by his wife, lost one of his children, presumably through miscarriage, as the child remains unnamed in the play. This loss serves as the catalyst for his driven work ethic; as Lena says, he "worked himself...
Hansberry, in her seminal work A Raisin in the Sun, draws upon all of her characters to tell not only their story, but the collective story of the disenfranchised African-American man. Here, the elder Mr. Younger, as outlined by his wife, lost one of his children, presumably through miscarriage, as the child remains unnamed in the play. This loss serves as the catalyst for his driven work ethic; as Lena says, he "worked himself to death."
The struggle he grapples with, a struggle we will see echoed in his son Walter, is that of control in a world designed to remove any control a black man would hope to find. He could not control the loss of his flesh and blood and he sees that as a personal affront to his manhood. The world in which he lived, which Mama alludes to later in the play, is fraught with the racism and segregation leftover from the antebellum South. The world tried to control him, as a black man, and he, in turn tried to control it, but finds himself in a losing battle.
It seems plausible that Mr. Younger felt that a man should be able to have some control at least in his home, with his family. This is not an instance of being controlling but more so having the power to keep his family safe. As a man, as a father, this is a priority and is sadly something over which he had no power.
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