“You tired, ain’t you? Tired of everything. Me, the boy, the way we live – this beat-up hole – everything. Ain’t you? So tired – moaning and groaning all the time, but you wouldn’t do nothing to help, would you? You couldn’t be on my side that long for nothing, could you?” -Walter, Act 1 Scene 1
“Lena, something is happening between Walter and me. I don’t know what it is – but he needs something – something I can’t give him anymore. He needs this chance.” -Ruth, Act 1 Scene 1
“…Big Walter used to say, he’d get right wet in the eyes sometimes, lean his head back with the water standing in his eyes and say, "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.” -Mama, Act 1 Scene 1
What defines a man? Is it the things he owns, the money, the property to his name? Is it his heritage, the roots from which were forged his culture? The family that raised him, and that which he raised around himself? Is it the dreams he has, the goals and hopes he boasts in barrooms and buries in the pit of his soul? The pride which guides his choices? Or is it the suffering he endures, through circumstance and sacrifice, that shapes him?
It has been the goal of literary-minded men throughout history to answer this question, each positing one theory or another, be it the “man is his pride and grace under pressure” philosophy of Hemingway or the exploration of a man as defined by his property in F. Scott Fitzgerrald’s The Great Gatsby. Yet, it was a woman who, in 1956, proved that a man is a sum of all these qualities, that they are what define him, they are at times what destroy him, and they are what exalt him; and in doing so crafted an enduring classic of the stage which rings as relevant and true today as it did when the great Sidney Poitier and Ruby Dee first spoke their lines.
To several critics at the time, A Raisin in the Sun “worked” because “it was about family. It didn’t need to be about Negroes at all”. Others saw Walter Younger as the black equivalent to Tennessee Williams’ tragic Willy Loman. Still others saw it as a rallying cry for racial pride. Indeed, the play is all of these and still more. At its core, A Raisin in the Sun is a play that resonates with all men because it deals with heritage. It shows a man in that eternal struggle between what he feels he should be and should want and what he is and has already.
A Raisin in the Sun is essential reading for any man, was Walter Younger is every man, or almost that. What is essential to Walter Younger’s character is not that he is black (indeed, not once in the play does he define himself as a black man until Karl Lindner makes it clear he sees Walter as nothing but), it’s that he is an oppressed man. He is a character held back in his own time, and weighed down by a history, a lineage of suppression and oppression that his forefathers endured and finally rose above. It is this legacy that tortures him (Mama responds to Walter’s drunken frustration at his lot in life by saying “My husband always said being any kind of a servant wasn’t a fit thing for a man to have to be. He always said a man’s hands was made to make things, or to turn the earth with – not to drive nobody’s car for ‘em – or – carry they slop jars. And my boy is just like him – he wasn’t meant to wait on nobody.”;); it is this legacy that spurs him in his desire to achieve the “American Dream”, to provide for his family, leading him into foolhardy schemes with untrustworthy characters. It is this legacy that causes him first to swallow his pride and to accept the money Lindner offers to keep the Youngers out of the all-white neighborhood, and it is this legacy that allows him to finally turn down the money, bringing a tear to his mother’s eye and honoring his father (and in a way, all of his ancestors), by telling Lindner the story of his family, concluding it with “This is my son, and he makes the sixth generation of our family in this country. And we have all thought about your offer, and we have decided to move into our house because my father – my father – he earned it for us brick by brick.”
To open Lorraine Hansberry’s masterwork is a delight, not just for it’s near poetic stage directions (while most plays settle for “There is a chair, a carpet, and lights”, Hansberry lovingly sets the scene with descriptions like “Still, we can see that at some time, a time probably no longer remembered by the family (except perhaps for MAMA), the furnishings of this room were actually selected with care and love and even hope – and brought to this apartment and arranged with taste and pride.”;), but its timeless and topical subject matter. Within its 100 or so pages, the play touches on abortion, inter-generational conflicts, religion and atheism, familial disputes and assimilation v. racial pride. Mama, Ruth and Beneatha are all characters so equally complex to Walter that whole novels could be written about them and their inner-struggles (indeed, the play is so sub textually rich that an entirely new play entitled Clybourne Park was crafted which told the story of the unseen prior owners of the house the Youngers bought), yet for the modern man it is both Walter and his late father who are the most resonant.
Though he’s never seen in the play, as it is his death which brings about the fateful check that is the catalyst of all that would unfold, Big Walter is present throughout, both in Mama’s moment of grief (whose true cause is never spoken aloud) during the otherwise joyous moment of the check’s arrival; and through his son’s actions. Walter’s desperation to make a better life for his son in even the most minor way, as evidenced by his scrounging of another 50 cents so that his son can take a taxi cab to school, echoes his father’s sentiment of children making dreams seem worthwhile. And indeed it is the evocation of his father’s spirit which imbues Walter with the courage to shun Lindner’s money, and to lead his family headstrong and joyous into the fearful, hopeful unknown.
A Raisin in the Sun stands as a landmark of American theatre, of African American literature, and may very well be the greatest piece of American playwriting ever produced. Evocative and eternal, the struggle of Walter Younger will always have a place in the American spirit, and deserves a place on every man’s bookshelf.
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