Lena Younger (Mama)
alter Lee Younger
Ruth Younger Travis Younger
Willy Harris
Karl Lindner
Walter Lee Younger
Ruth Younger
Travis Younger
DREAM:
DREAM:
DREAM:
Success. “I want so many things that they are driving me kind of crazy,” says Walter Lee. Dissatisfied with his job as a chauffeur, he dreams of opening a liquor store—which he hopes will be a launchpad to greater wealth and power.
WHAT HE’LL SACRIFICE:
The money, his common sense, and his dignity. He gives his untrustworthy business partner Willy all the money— including money promised for Beneatha’s education—to kickstart the business. When Willy runs off with the money, his con devastates Walter Lee. Now convinced morality is a mere distraction from the cycle of taking or being “tooken” that drives the world, Walter Lee decides to accept Lindner’s money and even plans to perform his own personal minstrel show.
WHAT HE WON’T:
His father’s pride. Throughout the play, Walter Lee seems ambitious and unscrupulous, as if there is little he wouldn’t sacrifice. When his mother challenges his obsession with money, he retorts that “money is life.” But when he faces Lindner at the end of the play, he finally chooses pride in his family instead. “We have decided to move into our house,” he says, “because my father—my father—he earned it for us, brick by brick.”
Her family. As Hansberry writes, “She is a woman in the middle, torn between the needs and dreams of others, and she subordinates herself because, caring deeply about theirs, she chooses to; but underneath is a fire that will erupt as needs be.”
WHAT SHE’LL SACRIFICE:
Her pregnancy. Unexpectedly pregnant, Ruth weighs whether or not to have an abortion; by terminating the pregnancy she could avoid putting an additional burden on the family’s precarious finances and on her turbulent relationship with Walter Lee.
WHAT SHE WON’T:
Unknown. More than having dreams of his own, ten-year-old Travis finds the adults in his family project their dreams onto him. His grandmother, Lena, wants him to be the first to know after she’s bought a house—one where he’ll have his own room for the first time. When his father, Walter Lee, asks him what he wants to be when he grows up, Travis replies “a bus driver,” and Walter Lee urges him to be more ambitious, like he is. Ruth processes her mixed and changing feelings toward her husband through their son: she scolds Travis for staying out late without notice or spending pocket money frivolously, faults his father shares.
Herself. While initially reserved, Ruth begins to advocate for herself with greater passion and confidence. After Walter loses the money and Lena resigns herself to staying in the apartment, it’s Ruth who insists, “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!”
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