Lena Younger (Mama)

Lena Younger, also known as Mama, is the matriarch of the Younger family and plays a significant role in the events of the play. A retired domestic worker, she works tirelessly to ensure the well-being of her family, keeping her religious faith and remaining optimistic in spite of financial and social challenges. As shown through her actions and her faith, Lena is a proud Black woman and serves as the family's source of strength, stability, and spiritual center. (Read our extended character analysis of Lena Younger.)

Walter Lee Younger

Walter Lee Younger, Lena Younger’s 35-year-old son, lives at home and works as a chauffeur. Walter is deeply unhappy with his life and his job. His relationships with his family members are tenuous: his wife, Ruth, almost gets an abortion when she thinks Walter doesn’t love her anymore, and his sister, Beneatha, grows angry when Walter disparages her desire to become a doctor. (Read our extended character analysis of Walter Lee Younger.)

Beneatha “Bennie” Younger is Lena’s twenty-year-old daughter. A college student, Beneatha aspires to be a doctor, and she relies on her father’s life insurance money for her medical school tuition. Beneatha is attractive and well educated but still young, immature, and, at times, selfish. She argues with her brother, Walter, who believes she should become a nurse, and she rebels against her mother’s traditional view on religion. Still unsure of her identity, Beneatha explores various hobbies like horseback riding and playing guitar, despite her mother’s accusation that she simply moves from one interest to the next. Throughout the course of the play, she dates two men: the wealthy George Murchison and the Nigerian-born Joseph Asagai. Beneatha dislikes George because he eschews his African heritage; however, she falls for Joseph Asagai, who embraces his African identity and encourages her to wear an Afro instead of a straightened hairstyle.

Ruth Younger is Walter’s thirty-year-old wife. Once an attractive woman, Ruth’s “disappointment has already begun to hang in her face.” She is a domestic servant who, like Lena, works tirelessly to keep her family together. At the start of the play, Ruth and Walter’s relationship is strained, and Walter blames Ruth for his life’s misfortunes. Despite these strains, Ruth goes to any and all lengths to save their marriage, from trying to persuade Lena to allow Walter to invest in the liquor store to considering aborting their unborn child to save their family from additional financial and emotional burdens. However, when she discovers that Lena has put a down payment on a larger house in Clybourne Park, Ruth’s hope is renewed, her marriage improves, and she keeps the baby.

Travis Willard Younger is Ruth and Walter’s ten-year-old son. He is a handsome boy and everyone dotes on him. He is content with how things are and enjoys the attention he receives from his family. Unlike his father, who aspires to rise above the working class, Travis simply desires to become a bus driver.

One of Beneatha’s suitors, Joseph Asagai is a handsome, intellectual, and charismatic college student from Nigeria. Unlike Beneatha’s other suitor, who eschews his African heritage, Asagai embraces it. He encourages Beneatha to embrace her African heritage and identity as well. He bluntly questions why she wears her hair straight, and he convinces her to wear African garb and an Afro. However, his opinions are slightly contradictory. Asagai believes that the only feeling a woman should feel is love for her husband. At the end of the play, he proposes marriage to Beneatha and asks her to move to Africa with him once she becomes a doctor. The text of the play suggests that Beneatha will accept his proposal.

George Murchison is an affluent college student whom Beneatha dates for some time. Murchison and Beneatha do not share the same values—he is conservative with middle-class sensibilities—and Beneatha grows to dislike him. He is the antithesis of both Beneatha and Asagai—conservative and unappreciative of his African identity.

Karl Lindner is the white representative of the Welcoming Committee of Clybourne Park. He approaches the Youngers in order to dissuade them from moving into Clybourne Park. In his effort to prevent the Younger family from integrating into this white neighborhood, Lindner offers to buy the house Lena put a down payment on at a profit. In the final scene of the play, the Youngers refuse his offer, signaling a blow to the systematic segregation of housing communities that Lindner represents.

Walter Younger hands over his portion of his father’s life insurance money to his friend and business partner Bobo. Bobo appears on stage in act 2, scene 3, to reveal that Willy Harris, another business partner in the liquor store venture, has fled with all of his and Walter’s money.