Nicholas Barnard Women Playwrights: A Raisin in the Sun 4/12/02
2. Beneatha's determination to pursue becoming a doctor to me speaks about the visionary qualities of the character. Beneatha is the dreamer of the family, her main function within the family is to aim as high as possible and go for the far out fanciful dream. This contrasts with Walter Lee whose dreams are simpler and down to earth. The resentment that comes between these two generates from the fact that Walter's dreams are not as fanciful and just about keeping the family going at the status quo plus a little bit, Beneatha's dreams are about moving herself forward far beyond the status quo. This is why Mama, who purchases a house that is a dream of hers, and it is far beyond the status quo for a black family of the time. Mama and Beneatha are both pioneers in this sense, but Beneatha is looking out for herself, while Mama is looking out for her family/her plant. George sees Beneatha as someone who is just over achieving, and most likely wants to domesticate her, and not allow her to pursue her dreams, I would site his specific speech concerning that school is to “get the grade to get a degree”. Asagi on the other hand seems in my mind the more supportive of Beneatha, although he wants to meld their dreams into one, he truly wants to share dreams. Simply symbolic of this is him convincing Beneatha to become a doctor in Africa, where he can have his dreams, nurture her ambitions to become a doctor, and indulge her in African culture that she is so interested in.
3. I think Walter isn't making a very deep metaphorical argument when he says money is life. In my mind he truly believes to get anywhere, to be anyone, in effect to truly become a man unto himself, and self-actualize you must have money, and lots of it. I think given Walter's position as the patriarch of the family, and the fact that he shares the leadership position of the family with his mother, he is lacking something he considers fundamental to his manhood, having a home unto himself. I believe that Walter would be happy with the same apartment, if it were just him, Ruth, and Travis. His concerns come from the basic fact that his dreams have not come true, and I think he sees that being part of the family has dragged him down, he is forced to share resources and leadership with several women, and this is a detriment to his dream of having his family on this own. I think also in some ways Walter is more impatient than the others, acting on impulse when he decides to sell the house back to the homeowner's association. I think the Youngers's poverty is so much harder on Walter than on the rest of the family, because he has managed to make very little for his family, while his father left them a $10,000 fund to dream with, and at the moment he leaves his family nothing to dream with, with no resources whatsoever.
4. I see the problems that the Youngers must confront as more related to socioeconomic class more than anything else. I think the only two specifically African American problems that must be dealt with are the resistance of the Youngers's future neighbors to their moving, and the lack of knowledge of their heritage that Beneatha covets so much. In the broadest sense the problem that confronts people of lower economic status is how there is a fundamental belief that you all must stick together, this does not happen in middle class families. In middle class families, you stick together as a family for only so long, then as children grow up, they strike out on their own, and develop relationships where resources only flow from the parents to the children, then stop, and eventually at a later date the resources flow back from the parents. But in the lower class model, everyone's resources flow into a common family support system, where the members struggle and argue about what pieces of the resources they themselves should get. In my mind this holds the whole family back, as everyone must be moving forward lockstep. Beneatha's exclamations about how much lower can WE go, versus how much lower can my brother go. They all share in each other's collective successes, and failures. From my perspective of a middle class family, everyone shares in the successes of others, but not in the failures. Middle class families derive their strength by personalizing their failures, and sharing their successes. Lower class families are stuck because of the sharing of both.
5. I think the ending of the play cannot be seen as happy or sad. I think it is the fact that the Youngers are moving forward, and not stagnating that makes it hopeful. Their journey in their new home will not be an easy one, or even a personally fulfilling one, but it places the Youngers in a position to move forward, to leave the past of this apartment behind and begin to build a new life for themselves. The ending is hopeful, it is the dream of mama that her little plant, her family, will be allowed to grow once it is removed from the constrains of the restrictive apartment, and moved to the freer suburbs.-->[Author ID0: at ]