Beneatha and Beyonce

When Beneatha reveals her hair to be “close-cropped and un-straightened” (80), her family and George are extremely appalled.  Their abhorrence is significant because curly hair is an attribute that epitomizes black pride.  Starting in the 1960s, black men and women stopped cutting their hair and grew afros to embrace their black heritage.

 

2016

Still today, natural hair is used as a symbol of empowerment and allows African Americans to express their culture.

 just look at Queen Bey herself rocking corn rose to embrace her black heritage.  Her new album, Lemonade, shocked the (white) world because Beyonce diverged from her girly, white-washed image and embraced her roots.  Songs like “Freedom” and “Daddy Lessons” had soulful rhythms that marked a stark contrast to her previous pop tunes.  (Saturday Night Live did a great parody of the world’s general shock at Beyonce’s new beats and you can watch it here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ociMBfkDG1w )



2008

But anyways, the reason why I’m including this is because the shock the world felt at Beyonce expressing her black heritage is similar to how Beneatha’s family and friends reacted to her form of “expressing ME” (48). 

Additionally, I found that when Mr. Linder came to visit the Youngers and Beneatha answered the door, amidst her nervousness in the presence of a white man, Beneatha finds herself “smoothing her hair” (113).  This imagery depicts Beneatha trying to smooth out her curls, and in turn, hide her black heritage from Mr. Linder because of her “embarrassment”.  This is one of the only times in the novel that Beneatha is shy about who she is.  Even when George and Asagai criticize her appearance as being “eccentric” (80) and “assimilationist” (63), Beneatha stays true to her views.  However, Mr. Linder evokes feelings of inferiority and insecurity.  This reminded me of the passage in The Bluest Eye when Pecola felt excited to purchase her Mary Janes, but after her nasty encounter with the cashier, she feels ugly again.  This similar relationship between white men and black girls demonstrates the theme that society inflicts emotional abuses on minorities.     

Grapes in Water

A Raisin in the Sun demonstrates the struggle of black minority groups through its skillful depiction of family relationships in the first act.

First of all, I find it significant that Hansberry set the time period for her novel as anytime between “World War II and the present” because it demonstrates the everlasting nature of the struggle for equality.  I also connected this time frame to “The Aesthetics of Segregation, Black Liberation” literary criticism.  This article states that Hansberry did “not offer desegregation as the ultimate answer to segregation, but rather as a necessary step” toward achieving equality for all of mankind (222).  The time frame adds to the notion that the fight for equality is ongoing by allowing readers in the “present” to take ownership of the problems presented in the play and apply them to their own lives.

Secondly, I thought that the characterization of the items in the house as “tired” not only emphasized Ruth’s weariness but also served to represent the exhausted lives of the black community as a whole.  In the 1950s, it was very difficult for people of color to attain white-collar jobs.  The majority of black women worked as maids or nannies for wealthy white families, and most black men worked in factories or held other blue-collar jobs.  These jobs offered little emotional reward, and there was little opportunity for advancement.  As a result, blacks were kept in an inescapable state of poverty and inferiority to whites.  This position in society took an emotional and physical toll on minorities.  In fact, the “American negro had a life expectancy of five to ten years less than the average white” (To Be Young 177).  The adverse effects on the emotional and physical well-being of blacks in an oppressive society is represented in Hansberry’s personification of the Lee’s house as “tired”.   

And finally, I found Walter’s rant about Ruth not supporting his dream very ironic.  He accusingly asserts that Ruth doesn’t understand her spousal duty to “making’em feel like [he] somebody” because she reasonably refuses to blindly support his dream of opening a liquor store.  Walter says that she suppresses his hope by indifferently offering him eggs without listening to him.  However, despite Walter’s whiney complaints that he is the one being oppressed, as a black woman, Ruth is ultimately the inferior partner in the relationship and therefore could never oppress him.  In fact, Walter repeatedly emotionally mistreats Ruth by referring to her as a “colored woman”(27) in a derogatory fashion.  Through this dynamic, Hansberry demonstrates the marital issues that develop as a result of a twisted and harmful society.

From 20 to 30

“’No…I just remembered that today’s my birthday.’

I was thirty.  Before me stretched the portentous, menacing road of a new decade.

It was seven o’clock when we got into the coupe with him and started for Long Island.  Tom talked incessantly, exulting and laughing, but his voice was as remote from Jordan and me as the foreign clamor on the sidewalk or the tumult of the elevated overhead.  Human sympathy has its limits, and we were content to let all their tragic arguments fade with the city lights behind.  Thirty—the promise of a decade of loneliness, a thinning list of single men to know, a thinning briefcase of enthusiasm, thinning hair.  But there was Jordan beside me, who, unlike Daisy, was too wise ever to carry well-forgotten dreams from age to age.  As we passed over the dark bridge her wan face fell lazily against my coat’s shoulder and the formidable stroke of thirty died away with the reassuring pressure of her hand.

So we drove on toward death through the cooling twilight.” (135-136)

 

I find this passage tragically beautiful because it essentially demonstrates the inevitable end to the glamour and the impossibility of Daisy and Gatsby’s romance.  This scene takes place right after the big fight scene between Tom and Gatsby, and once Gatsby and Daisy have left, Jordan, Tom, and Nick are left silently soaking in the events that had just taken place before them.  Reflecting on the fight is somewhat sobering to Nick, and he is suddenly pulled from his state of wonderment of the follies of the Easterners around him when he realizes that it is his birthday.

However, no one wishes Nick a happy birthday, and the statement becomes a rather sad, stand-alone fact.  Even Nick himself describes turning thirty as “menacing”, because he is reluctant to end the fun of his 20s. Therefore, it is significant that Nick turned 30 rather than some other year because the transition from his 20s to 30s symbolizes the inevitable end of the youthful follies of the 1920s. All the easterners cling to their youth with a tight grip and forever strive to achieve the high of living fast and carelessly.  To them, the passage of time is a disdainful inconvenience.  But after this fight scene, each character is met with the ugly reality of their follies, and they are forced to retreat back into the comfort of their wealth.  For example, after Daisy’s affair with Gatsby turns serious and Gatsby expresses to Daisy his expectations for her to live with him, Daisy runs back to Tom because of the safety of his stability.  The description of Daisy’s dreams (and implicitly, her past romance with Gatsby) as “well-forgotten” mark the end of Daisy and Gatsby’s romance.   

Also, with the aid of Jordan’s comforting touch, Nick is able to accept his age and the end of his follies.  His new appreciation for wisdom and stability is demonstrated in his contrast of Jordan to Daisy when he says that Jordan “was too wise ever to carry well-forgotten dreams from age to age.”  It is at this point where Nick becomes truly disillusioned with his friends and begins to separate himself from them, resulting in his break up with Jordan and his move out of the city at the end of the book.  Because although Gatsby and Jordan and Tom and Daisy will forever chase the highs of the 1920s, Nick is able to accept that he is 30, and his time under the yellow “city lights” of Long Island has expired.