I’m about to read a play called Clybourne Park, which borrows plotline from A Raisin in the Sun, so I thought I’d review the original play this week and review Clybourne Park next week. This review contains nearly a complete plot summary and will thus spoil the play if you haven’t read it. This is a play I teach most years, and I enjoy watching my students’ reaction to it. Just like the younger characters in the play, my students have been somewhat sheltered, and for some, this play opens their eyes.
A Raisin in the Sun is a play that takes place in the predominantly black South Side of Chicago during the time of racism in the mid-to-late 1950s. As the play opens, the Younger family is eagerly awaiting an insurance check for $10,000 (a significant amount of money in those days—much more significant than today). This is a life insurance payout for Walter Younger, the grandfather of the family, who has recently passed. Throughout the play, Mama, the grandmother, reminisces on the work ethic, values, and dreams of her late husband. She references that they had lost one baby to poverty and worked very hard to raise their other two children, Walter and Beneatha, who are now adults and live in the small apartment with Mama, Walter’s wife Ruth, and Walter and Ruth’s son, Travis. Needless to say, it’s a tiny apartment for so many people, but Mama works hard to provide for everyone to have a stable life.
The conflict comes when Walter reveals that he wants to use the insurance money for a business proposition: he wants to open up a liquor store with some friends. On the other hand, Beneatha would gladly accept the insurance money to pay for her schooling—she is currently an undergraduate student (the first in her family to go to college) and wants to be a doctor.
Walter criticizes his sister, telling her she should be a nurse instead, or just get married and be quiet. He disapproves of her ambition and her insistence on vocalizing her opinions on everything, which was not readily accepted for females of her time. At the same time, Walter is trying to become an entrepreneur, which was not easily done for African Americans at the time. Meanwhile, Mama just wants the family to get along. As if the arguments aren’t bad enough, Ruth finds out she’s pregnant with another child, and the family worries about where the baby will sleep—Travis already has to sleep on the couch in the living room, and Mama and Beneatha are doubled-up in Mama’s room. The trouble pushes Ruth to consider having an abortion, and the decision nearly tears the family apart. Walter, selfish to get rich quick, doesn’t seem to care about his wife’s decision. Mama is sorely disappointed, and Ruth is emotionally frustrated.
Mama, who has already lost a child to poverty, resolves to buy a house, allowing Ruth to have the baby. The most affordable house, though, is in an all-white neighborhood. Houses for blacks are much further away and much more expensive. Though the family is hesitant, they are happy to be moving…except Walter.
In the end, Walter makes a stupid decision. He takes the money and invests it with one of his “partners,” a man no one else in the family trusts. The man runs off with the money, leaving the family penniless. They have the chance to sell their house in the all-white neighborhood for a profit—the whites in the neighborhood do not want a black family to move in—or move into the neighborhood and work hard to collectively make enough money to pay off the house. Mama leaves it all up to Walter, who is ready to sell out in exchange for the money.
The final scene is the crux of the play. Walter rehearses to his horrified family just how he will act when the representative of Clybourne Park comes to give him the money in exchange for signing an agreement not to move into the all-white neighborhood. As he rehearses, he begins in a bitter way, but his dialogue breaks down so that at the end, he is speaking in a dialect that would have been used by slaves. In a sarcastic way, he is telling the imaginary man that he and his family are not worthy of living in the neighborhood—they are not human beings, and they have no right to dirty the white neighborhood. At this point in the play, Walter is crying because he realizes the true significance of his decision and words, especially because his young son is watching. Walter realizes how wrong he was, that he and his family need to retain their dignity, even at the cost of hard work and sacrifice.
It’s an important decision that perplexes my students every year (“Why didn’t he just take the money and screw the white neighborhood? Hell, I’d do it over again in another white neighborhood, too, and get rich off of ‘em!”). But in the historical context, it’s an important decision. Throughout the play, Mama references the fact that she lived so close to slavery that for her, pride and dignity—and basic luxuries like a safe place to live with enough food—are things she appreciates, but things that her children take for granted. This sense of pride is found again at the end of the play.
Just like Beneatha is trying to forge the way for other women to become doctors, Walter and his family decide to forge the way for people of all backgrounds to live in neighborhoods that would eventually, even if decades later, would no longer be segregated. It’s an inspiring ending and important for the younger generations to read. They live in a different world, and it’s healthy for them to understand the struggles that people fought so that we live in a largely equal world with largely equal rights.
If you aren’t able to see the play performed, it’s a quick read.
I look forward to reading Clybourne Park and see what Bruce Norris does with this storyline.
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—Readers and viewers of Raisin in the Sun all seem aligned in their perceptions which are that–
+the story was essentially about a close knit, black family trying to move into a white neighborhood.
+the Youngers were apparently a matriarchal family headed by a single mother who was all wise and pretty much correct in all her actions.
+Walter Lee was money hungry, materialistic and selfish and deserved the least sympathy of all of the characters.
+aside from Walter losing most of the money, all of the family’s problems were due to racism.
+Ruth was saintly in enduring Walter Lee’s restlessness and compulsiveness.
+Beneatha’s character was exemplary because she aspired to become a medical doctor.
+Criticism is abundantly heaped on Walter for his flaws but there seems to be much resistance seeing any flaws or even questioning the behavior of any other family members. Viewers and readers all seem protective of and personally connected to them as if these fictional characters are their family.
—So, here are some down to earth questions about issues I’ve never heard discussed regarding Raisin in the Sun:
1 Why did family members talk so harshly to each other even in the morning? Is this how they started each day?
2 Why didn’t we see the Younger family eat meals together even when everyone was at home? Did they have any family bonding rituals? Everyone seems to be on their individual schedules
3 Was Ruth’s morning grumpiness due to her secret about her pregnancy? It had to be because she was not a single mom with several small children but a married woman with only one adolescent child. Yet, all she could manage to cook for breakfast was scrambled eggs.
4 Why was Walter the only person talking about the insurance money? They all knew about it for six months, but the other adults all seemed uncomfortable as if merely mentioning money was sinful. As the play opens, we learn that they are sharing a hallway bathroom with neighbors. So why wasn’t anyone talking or even thinking about using the money to move to a larger place with its own bathroom(s)? Such residences did exist in black neighborhoods in Chicago in the 1950s.
5 Why was mama so domineering to her grown children as if she had been an overcompensating single mother? She had not been a single mother but a working wife who with her working husband raised two children to adulthood. All of the family spoke of Walter Sr., in the highest reverence. So clearly, he fulfilled his role as husband and father. So why is mama so heavy handed with her 35-year-old son and 20+ year old daughter?
6 Why did mama single-handedly buy the house even though the family comprised three other adults? Why didn’t mama have them go house hunting together as a family to lift family spirits?
7 Why did mama with her Clyborne Park housing choice thrust the entire family into a racial dilemma without any prior family consent and preparation? Is this the way that any family buys their first house let alone buy it as the first blacks in a white neighborhood? How could mama conclude from a half day house search on the bus that all nice houses in black areas were over-priced? Why would she think she could find a bargain in an area where she and her family would be unwanted?
8 Did mama consider that this move might cause her grandson to be transferred to a racially hostile school in Clyborne Park?
9 Why did mama house hunt around the city on the bus with $10,000 cash in her purse? Why did she have $6,500 cash in her purse when she went to a bar at night looking for Walter? Why didn’t she keep the money in a bank account?
10 Why didn’t we ever see mama pray for wisdom and guidance regarding the money or the family’s general well-being. Why did we only see her mention God when she slapped her daughter for questioning God’s utility in daily human life—another instance of treating her grown daughter like a child?
11 Why would the insurance money all belong to mama? If it was a survivors’ benefit that the father originated when Walter and Beneatha were still children, why would it not be for them all and not just for mama?
12 When she learned that her sister-in-law, Ruth, was pregnant, why was aspiring medical doctor Beneatha’s first reaction, “where is it going to sleep? Is this the appropriate sensitivity of an aspiring Ob/Gyn, pediatrician or family doctor?
13 What was Beneatha’s income source that enabled her to pay for exotic elective classes and expensive camera equipment collecting dust in a closet while her nephew sleeps on the living room couch and is overdue for new shoes? As an aspiring health care professional hoping to help meet needs in the larger community, why is she oblivious to needs in her own house?
14 If Walter was so ashamed of and humiliated by his job as a chauffeur why didn’t he pursue something else? Chicago industry was bustling in the 1950s with better paying jobs for blacks in many areas, even though blacks faced intense job and trade union discrimination. By the 1950s, blacks from the south had been migrating to Chicago for decades and landing jobs in the steel mills, the stock yards, various large factories, and in construction and transportation as well as in government such as the post office.
15 When Walter prioritizes the desire for better economic opportunity in Chicago in the 1950s why does mama respond by referencing safety from lynching as a priority as if they were living in the deep south back in the 1920s? Why does mama still carry this fear about southern lynching? Mama and Walter Sr had moved north to Chicago before Walter Jr and Beneatha were born. Emmett Till was lynched in 1955, not in Chicago, but when he paid a visit down south from Chicago.
15 How in the world could Walter be conned into handing over $6,500 to Willie Harris? Why would he think all that money would be needed just to smooth the way for liquor licensing? What money would be left to acquire the space and inventory to actually open the liquor store? Why didn’t he insist on holding his money and going with Willie and Bobo to Springfield? Why would Bobo have handed over his money to Willie if he was later going to meet Willie at the train station for the trip to Springfield? Why didn’t Walter bring Willie Harris by the house to meet his family? They quickly would have sized up Willie Harris as shady. Instead, Walter tries to show mama a piece of paper (written proposal) as if that would convince her to hand him several thousand dollars. Why did Walter seem so anxious to impress Willie Harris as if he were a fatherless male desperate for fatherly mentorship. Walter did not grow up fatherless, so his gullibility is puzzling. Why did Walter only speak of the money being made from his father’s flesh after he lost it . Perhaps if he had affirmed these words when he had the money, he would not been gullible to entrusting it to Willie Harris.
16 Why does Walter draw the least sympathy of all family members? Why do viewers of the play universally see him as money hungry, materialistic and selfish for wanting to be an entrepreneur and get ahead economically? When did Walter ever speak about using money for selfish indulgences? He spoke about wanting to be able adorn his wife with pearls and not having his son sleep on the living room couch and needing new shoes.
17 Near the end when mama expresses deep compassion for her son for how the world has “whipped him so”, did she recognize that his own family had first whipped him with their sharp dismissals and mocking of him and his liquor store idea without ever offering any acceptable alternatives? Why didn’t the family ever consider business possibilities other than a liquor store? These could include a laundromat, dry-cleaners, barbershop, florist shop or shoe store. Or what about acquiring rental income property, such as the building where they were living? [I have a great uncle and great aunt (born 1901 & 1903), both about mama’s age who came to Chicago from Mississippi in the 1930s. With their spouses they worked a number of years in factories and by the 1940s had saved enough money to buy multi-unit buildings in Bronzeville to become landlords. They each opened a restaurant on their property. They became self-employed and economically self supporting for the rest of their lives. The Youngers had the rare advantage of an immediate lump sum of money with which to pursue a similar course but clearly did not realize how blessed they were.]
18 Why did we never see the Youngers plan anything as a family? We only saw them react. They knew for six months that the insurance money was coming but made no plans for how to use it. Instead, Momma brought the house in reaction to learning earlier that same day that Ruth was considering an abortion. Mamma handed over the rest of the money to Walter in reaction to her guilt about Walter’s despair. By not planning, the Youngers turned economic opportunity into a serious of dilemmas. How could they have never even discussed buying a house or moving to a larger rental space during the six months? If they had, Ruth and Walter likely would have been on better terms and Ruth would have celebrated her pregnancy. If they had considered other business ideas as a family, Walter would not have been so fixated on a liquor store and taken up with outsiders and gotten conned.
—Final question: What was the author conveying by showing us so many unflattering things about the Younigers? Could it be to show that the Youngers problems were mostly due to internal issues and not external racism–even in 1950s Chicago? The family’s lack of a tradition of coming together for meals and to discuss and plan as a unit, and Walter getting conned out of all that money were not due to racism.