A Raisin in the Sun

by Lorraine Hansberry

You look young this morning, baby. RUTH (Indifferently) Yeah? WALTER Just for a second—stirring them eggs. Just for a second it was—you looked real young again. (He reaches for her; she crosses away. Then, drily) It’s gone now—you look like yourself again! RUTH Man, if you don’t shut up and leave me alone. WALTER (Looking out to the street again) First thing a man ought to learn in life is not to make love to no colored woman first thing in the morning. You all some eeeevil people at eight o’clock in the morning. (TRAVIS appears in the hall doorway, almost fully dressed and quite wide awake now, his towels and pajamas across his shoulders. He opens the door and signals for his father to make the bathroom in a hurry) TRAVIS (Watching the bathroom) Daddy, come on!

bathroom utensils

(Looking up from the stove to inspect him automatically) Come here. (He crosses to her and she studies his head) If you don’t take this comb and fix this here head, you better! (TRAVIS puts down his books with a great sigh of oppression, and crosses to the mirror. His mother mutters under her breath about his “slubbornness”) ’Bout to march out of here with that head looking just like chickens slept in it! I just don’t know where you get your slubborn ways … And get your jacket, too. Looks chilly out this morning.

When she speaks to him, her voice has become a very gentle tease) RUTH (Mocking; as she thinks he would say it) Oh, Mama makes me so mad sometimes, I don’t know what to do! (She waits and continues to his back as he stands stock-still in front of the door) I wouldn’t kiss that woman good-bye for nothing in this world this morning! (The boy finally turns around and rolls his eyes at her, knowing the mood has changed and he is vindicated; he does not, however, move toward her yet) Not for nothing in this world! (She finally laughs aloud at him and holds out her arms to him and we see that it is a way between them, very old and practiced. He crosses to her and allows her to embrace him warmly but keeps his face fixed with masculine rigidity. She holds him back from her presently and looks at him and runs her fingers over the features of his face. With utter gentleness—) Now—whose little old angry man are you?

RUTH Walter, leave me alone! (She raises her head and stares at him vigorously—then says, more quietly) Eat your eggs, they gonna be cold. WALTER (Straightening up from her and looking off) That’s it. There you are. Man say to his woman: I got me a dream. His woman say: Eat your eggs. (Sadly, but gaining in power) Man say: I got to take hold of this here world, baby! And a woman will say: Eat your eggs and go to work. (Passionately now) Man say: I got to change my life, I’m choking to death, baby! And his woman say—(In utter anguish as he brings his fists down on his thighs)—Your eggs is getting cold!

WALTER (Not listening at all or even looking at her) This morning, I was lookin’ in the mirror and thinking about it … I’m thirty-five years old; I been married eleven years and I got a boy who sleeps in the living room—(Very, very quietly)—and all I got to give him is stories about how rich white people live

RUTH (Sincerely, but also self-righteously) Now that’s your money. It ain’t got nothing to do with me. We all feel like that—Walter and Bennie and me—even Travis.

RUTH You know what you should do, Miss Lena? You should take yourself a trip somewhere. To Europe or South America or someplace— MAMA (Throwing up her hands at the thought) Oh, child! RUTH I’m serious. Just pack up and leave! Go on away and enjoy yourself some. Forget about the family and have yourself a ball for once in your life— MAMA (Drily) You sound like I’m just about ready to die. Who’d go with me? What I look like wandering ’round Europe by myself? RUTH Shoot—these here rich white women do it all the time. They don’t think nothing of packing up they suitcases and piling on one of them big steamships and—swoosh!—they gone, child. MAMA Something always told me I wasn’t no rich white woman.

RUTH (Keeps her head down, ironing) Yes, life can be a barrel of disappointments, sometimes.

“Seem like God didn’t see fit to give the black man nothing but dreams—but He did give us children to make them dreams seem worth while.” (She smiles) He could talk like that, don’t you know.

MAMA Yes, a fine man—just couldn’t never catch up with his dreams, that’s all.

BENEATHA How did I manage to get on everybody’s wrong side by just walking into a room? RUTH If you weren’t so fresh— BENEATHA Ruth, I’m twenty years old.

BENEATHA Not crazy. Brother isn’t really crazy yet—he—he’s an elaborate neurotic.

BENEATHA I mean it! I’m just tired of hearing about God all the time. What has He got to do with anything? Does he pay tuition? MAMA You ’bout to get your fresh little jaw slapped! RUTH That’s just what she needs, all right! BENEATHA Why? Why can’t I say what I want to around here, like everybody else? MAMA It don’t sound nice for a young girl to say things like that—you wasn’t brought up that way. Me and your father went to trouble to get you and Brother to church every Sunday. BENEATHA Mama, you don’t understand. It’s all a matter of ideas, and God is just one idea I don’t accept. It’s not important. I am not going out and be immoral or commit crimes because I don’t believe in God. I don’t even think about it. It’s just that I get tired of Him getting credit for all the things the human race achieves through its own stubborn effort. There simply is no blasted God—there is only man and it is he who makes miracles!

BENEATHA I see. (Quietly) I also see that everybody thinks it’s all right for Mama to be a tyrant. But all the tyranny in the world will never put a God in the heavens!

ASAGAI It’s how you can be sure that the world’s most liberated women are not liberated at all. You all talk about it too much!

WALTER Why—what she do for me? MAMA She loves you.

MAMA No … something has changed. (She looks at him) You something new, boy. In my time we was worried about not being lynched and getting to the North if we could and how to stay alive and still have a pinch of dignity too … Now here come you and Beneatha—talking ’bout things we ain’t never even thought about hardly, me and your daddy. You ain’t satisfied or proud of nothing we done. I mean that you had a home; that we kept you out of trouble till you was grown; that you don’t have to ride to work on the back of nobody’s streetcar— You my children—but how different we done become. WALTER

The silence shouts)

BENEATHA It’s from Nigeria. It’s a dance of welcome. RUTH Who you welcoming? BENEATHA The men back to the village. RUTH Where they been? BENEATHA How should I know—out hunting or something. Anyway, they are coming back now … RUTH Well, that’s good.

BENEATHA How can something that’s natural be eccentric? GEORGE That’s what being eccentric means—being natural. Get dressed. BENEATHA I don’t like that, George. RUTH Why must you and your brother make an argument out of everything people say? BENEATHA Because I hate assimilationist Negroes! RUTH Will somebody please tell me what assimila-who ever means! GEORGE Oh, it’s just a college girl’s way of calling people Uncle Toms—but that isn’t what it means at all. RUTH Well, what does it mean? BENEATHA (Cutting GEORGE off and staring at him as she replies to RUTH) It means someone who is willing to give up his own culture and submerge himself completely in the dominant, and in this case oppressive culture!

RUTH (Struck senseless with the news, in its various degrees of goodness and trouble, she sits a moment, her fists propping her chin in thought, and then she starts to rise, bringing her fists down with vigor, the radiance spreading from cheek to cheek again) Well—well!—All I can say is—if this is my time in life—MY TIME—to say good-bye—(And she builds with momentum as she starts to circle the room with an exuberant, almost tearfully happy release)—to these goddamned cracking walls!—(She pounds the walls)—and these marching roaches!—(She wipes at an imaginary army of marching roaches)—and this cramped little closet which ain’t now or never was no kitchen! … then I say it loud and good, HALLELUJAH! AND GOOD-BYE MISERY … I DONT NEVER WANT TO SEE YOUR UGLY FACE AGAIN! (She laughs joyously, having practically destroyed the apartment, and flings her arms up and lets them come down happily, slowly, reflectively, over her abdomen, aware for the first time perhaps that the life therein pulses with happiness and not despair) Lena? MAMA (Moved, watching her happiness) Yes, honey? RUTH (Looking off) Is there—is there a whole lot of sunlight? MAMA (Understanding) Yes, child, there’s a whole lot of sunlight. (Long pause) RUTH (Collecting herself and going to the door of the room TRAVIS is in) Well—I guess I better see ’bout Travis. (To MAMA) Lord, I sure don’t feel like whipping nobody today!

BENEATHA (At her door) Mama, if there are two things we, as a people, have got to overcome, one is the Ku Klux Klan—and the other is Mrs. Johnson. (She exits)

RUTH (Laughing happily) You said it, sister! (Noticing how large BENEATHA is absent-mindedly making the note) Honey, they ain’t going to read that from no airplane. BENEATHA (Laughing herself) I guess I always think things have more emphasis if they are big, somehow.

RUTH Me neither. That’s how long it been. (Smiling again) But we went last night. The picture wasn’t much good, but that didn’t seem to matter. We went—and we held hands.

BENEATHA Oh—Mama—they don’t do it like that any more. He talked Brotherhood. He said everybody ought to learn how to sit down and hate each other with good Christian fellowship.

BENEATHA What they think we going to do—eat ’em? RUTH No, honey, marry ’em.

BENEATHA That that was what one person could do for another, fix him up—sew up the problem, make him all right again. That was the most marvelous thing in the world … I wanted to do that. I always thought it was the one concrete thing in the world that a human being could do. Fix up the sick, you know—and make them whole again. This was truly being God … ASAGAI YOU wanted to be God? BENEATHA No—I wanted to cure. It used to be so important to me. I wanted to cure. It used to matter. I used to care. I mean about people and how their bodies hurt … ASAGAI And you’ve stopped caring? BENEATHA Yes—I think so. ASAGAI Why? BENEATHA (Bitterly) Because it doesn’t seem deep enough, close enough to what ails mankind! It was a child’s way of seeing things—or an idealist’s. ASAGAI Children see things very well sometimes—and idealists even better. BENEATHA I know that’s what you think. Because you are still where I left off. You with all your talk and dreams about Africa! You still think you can patch up the world. Cure the Great Sore of Colonialism—(Loftily, mocking it) with the Penicillin of Independence—! ASAGAI Yes!

BENEATHA And where does it end? ASAGAI End? Who even spoke of an end? To life? To living? BENEATHA An end to misery! To stupidity! Don’t you see there isn’t any real progress, Asagai, there is only one large circle that we march in, around and around, each of us with our own little picture in front of us—our own little mirage that we think is the future. ASAGAI That is the mistake. BENEATHA What? ASAGAI What you just said about the circle. It isn’t a circle—it is simply a long line—as in geometry, you know, one that reaches into infinity. And because we cannot see the end—we also cannot see how it changes. And it is very odd but those who see the changes—who dream, who will not give up—are called idealists … and those who see only the circle we call them the “realists”! BENEATHA Asagai, while I was sleeping in that bed in there, people went out and took the future right out of my hands! And nobody asked me, nobody consulted me—they just went out and changed my life! ASAGAI Was it your money?

ASAGAI Was it your money he gave away? BENEATHA It belonged to all of us. ASAGAI But did you earn it? Would you have had it at all if your father had not died? BENEATHA No. ASAGAI Then isn’t there something wrong in a house—in a world—where all dreams, good or bad, must depend on the death of a man? I never thought to see you like this, Alaiyo. You! Your brother made a mistake and you are grateful to him so that now you can give up the ailing human race on account of it! You talk about what good is struggle, what good is anything! Where are we all going and why are we bothering!

ASAGAI (Shouting over her) I LIVE THE ANSWER! (Pause) In my village at home it is the exceptional man who can even read a newspaper … or who ever sees a book at all. I will go home and much of what I will have to say will seem strange to the people of my village. But I will teach and work and things will happen, slowly and swiftly. At times it will seem that nothing changes at all … and then again the sudden dramatic events which make history leap into the future. And then quiet again. Retrogression even. Guns, murder, revolution. And I even will have moments when I wonder if the quiet was not better than all that death and hatred. But I will look about my village at the illiteracy and disease and ignorance and I will not wonder long. And perhaps … perhaps I will be a great man … I mean perhaps I will hold on to the substance of truth and find my way always with the right course … and perhaps for it I will be butchered in my bed some night by the servants of empire …

ASAGAI (He smiles) … or perhaps I shall live to be a very old man, respected and esteemed in my new nation … And perhaps I shall hold office and this is what I’m trying to tell you, Alaiyo: Perhaps the things I believe now for my country will be wrong and outmoded, and I will not understand and do terrible things to have things my way or merely to keep my power. Don’t you see that there will be young men and women—not British soldiers then, but my own black countrymen—to step out of the shadows some evening and slit my then useless throat? Don’t you see they have always been there … that they always will be. And that such a thing as my own death will be an advance? They who might kill me even … actually replenish all that I was.

ASAGAI Yes! … (Smiling and lifting his arms playfully) Three hundred years later the African Prince rose up out of the seas and swept the maiden back across the middle passage over which her ancestors had come— BENEATHA (Unable to play) To—to Nigeria? ASAGAI Nigeria. Home. (Coming to her with genuine romantic flippancy) I will show you our mountains and our stars; and give you cool drinks from gourds and teach you the old songs and the ways of our people—and, in time, we will pretend that—(Very softly)—you have only been away for a day. Say that you’ll come (He swings her around and takes her full in his arms in a kiss which proceeds to passion) BENEATHA (Pulling away suddenly) You’re getting me all mixed up— ASAGAI Why? BENEATHA Too many things—too many things have happened today. I must sit down and think. I don’t know what I feel about anything right this minute. (She promptly sits down and props her chin on her fist)

Love how she is able to reflect and see things more clearly or rationally than most people! That she acknowledges her needs to sit down and think about things before she does things impulsively. Shows that she is the more rational one between her and her brother, who takes more risks that end up putting them at risk. If things had been up to her, she would have thought as an outsider - maybe not put as much money in. Very selfish of him. She wouldn't have made such a foolish mistake, or perhaps she only thinks that she wouldn't.

ASAGAI (Charmed) All right, I shall leave you. No—don’t get up. (Touching her, gently, sweetly) Just sit awhile and think … Never be afraid to sit awhile and think. (He goes to door and looks at her) How often I have looked at you and said, “Ah—so this is what the New World hath finally wrought …”

Much more respectful of what she wants and needs. Sees her as more of an equal or compliment to who he is. Perhaps because of where and how he was raised. Cultural difference? George sees her as more of a trophy wife, doesn't want to hear her thoughts. Think of reading as necessary to simply get a degree (lazy thinking, not big picture) while she views it as gaining knowledge and so she can help people in the future. She is more appreciative of her education and what it means to be an AA woman getting a college education at the time.

RUTH (Turning and going to MAMA fast—the words pouring out with urgency and desperation) Lena—I’ll work … I’ll work twenty hours a day in all the kitchens in Chicago … I’ll strap my baby on my back if I have to and scrub all the floors in America and wash all the sheets in America if I have to—but we got to MOVE! We got to get OUT OF HERE!!

She shouldn't have to do so much work just to keep a good roof over their head! It's really not fair.

Sometimes you just got to know when to give up some things … and hold on to what you got.…

BENEATHA Well—we are dead now. All the talk about dreams and sunlight that goes on in this house. It’s all dead now.

MAMA Baby, how you going to feel on the inside? WALTER Fine! … Going to feel fine … a man … MAMA You won’t have nothing left then, Walter Lee.

BENEATHA He’s no brother of mine. MAMA What you say? BENEATHA I said that that individual in that room is no brother of mine.

BENEATHA Love him? There is nothing left to love.

Have you cried for that boy today? I don’t mean for yourself and for the family ’cause we lost the money. I mean for him: what he been through and what it done to him. Child, when do you think is the time to love somebody the most? When they done good and made things easy for everybody? Well then, you ain’t through learning—because that ain’t the time at all. It’s when he’s at his lowest and can’t believe in hisself ’cause the world done whipped him so!