Moreover, Walter believes he’s already “a grown man”, but his actions prove otherwise. He makes impulsive and thoughtless decisions, which can be seen as immature, like leaving someone he hardly knows, Willy Harris, with every single penny his mother had given him without even leaving some of it for his sister’s schooling; nevertheless, he always thinks he’s the one right and makes sure everyone’s aware of it with his ceaseless sense of irony (“Naw − you ain’t never been wrong about nothing, Mama,”).
Walter can also be seen as an ungrateful son, illustrated perfectly well by one of his violent statements, “No! ‘Cause ain’t nobody with me! Not even my own mother!”
“What you need me to say you done right for? You the head of this family. You run our lives like you want to. It was your money and you did what you wanted with it. So what you need for me to say it was all right for? So you butchered up a dream of mine − you − who always talking ‘bout your children’s dreams...”
Again, another example of his dissatisfied and unappreciative personality.
Yet, the man would initally see themselves “all tied up in a race of people that don’t know how to do nothing but moan, pray and have babies!”, who saw life “all divided up (...) between the takers and the ‘tooken’” (considering them the ‘tooken’), who told his mother, “So that’s the peace and comfort you went out and bought for us today!” after she put all her efforts into buying them a new home, and a man who believed there’s nothing worse than “coloured college boys” with their “fraternity pins and white shoes,” turns out to be a man of sentiments, love and dignity inside his heart.
“Get out of my house, man,” he told Mr. Linder, after he offered them a decent payment in exhange for them not moving into Clybourne Park.
***
Beneatha can be called the black sheep of the family; she appears to be in her early twenties and is portrayed as “slim and intense as her brother, (...) not as pretty as her sister-in-law, but her lean, almost intellectual face has a handsomeness of its own. (...) Her speech is a mixture of many things; it is different from the rest of the family’s insofar as education has permeated her sense of English...” It can be described, therefore, as “a soft slurring and transformed use of vowels”.
One of her major characteristics is her dry and sarcastic sense of humour (“I am going to start timing those people,” regarding the others who shared the same bathroom as they did), used a lot to annoy her older brother, Walter (“Lovely. Lovely. And you know, biology is the greatest. I dissected something that looked just like you yesterday,”).
Her inconvenience is also a point which often makes family members uncomfortable by her immediate way of saying it.
“Did you mean to? I mean did you plan it or was it an accident?” (asking Ruth whether she really wanted to have a baby).
“It is my business − where is he going to live, on the roof? Gee − I didn’t mean that, Ruth, honest. Gee, I don’t feel like that at all. I − I think it is wonderful.”
She tells this to Ruth when she discovers that her brother’s wife awaited another baby and it is an excellent example of Beneatha’s way of saying things without thinking about the the effect they may cause. However, when she does realize the meaning of what she has just said, and regrets it, you notice that there is some benignancy and compassion underneath her tough skin.
Still, Beneatha can be considered the wittiest (“Yes...we’ve all got acute ghetto-itus,” to her African boyfriend, Asagai, when he asks her whether there was anything wrong as she look disturbed) and ingenious, but at the same time quizzical, character of the play (“You − you are a nut. Thee is mad, boy,”). On the other hand, this attractive college student, can sometimes be extremely cruel by making fun of her mothers Christian values.
“Well − neither is God. I get sick of hearing about God.”
“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?”
Even if she does not believe in God, it is more than disrespectful to call him “just one idea” that she doesn’t accept and to say He’s “not important” to her religious mother. What dismays Mama the most is the fact that she didn’t raise her dauther to become an atheic; she and her husband “went to trouble” to get Beneatha “and Brother to church every Sunday” (referring to Walter).
“I’m 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 is simply no blasted God − there is only man and it is he who makes miracles!”
“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 God in the heavens!”
Both these remarks are just a couple of examples to illustrate how Beneatha can be exceedingly self-centered at certain times.
Nevertheless, Beneatha’s strongest quality is that of hating “assimilationist Negroes” and believing that “the only people on the world who are more snobbish than rich white people are rich coloured people.” At the beginning of the play she did ‘mutilate’ her hair so as to make it look prettier than when it was ‘raw’, but comprehends it was not part of her African identity. As a result, she decides to cut it all off (“Enough of this assimilationist junk!”), in order to become more like “a queen of the Nile” than a “Hollywood queen”. This is just the start of her search for her ‘black’ identity, which she is able to find and takes pride in it.
Beneatha is, in the end, a person with a lot of content; she’s an idealistic woman, with an independent and feminist perspective way of seeing life. She dislikes “shallow people”, like George Murchison, a coloured, rich date of hers, and believes that “things have more emphasis if they are big, somehow.” Her observation skills, “grand”, “saucy” and “bitter gestures”, have the power of intimidating people, together with her teasing smile, and every word she says seems to have two different meanings for it. She can also be called a hypocrite at times because when she says, “Stick and stones may break my bones but ...words will never hurt me!” after Walter makes fun of her fighting for civil rights, she doesn’t actually mean it, as she feels hurt with what he said. Besides, the only reason for her cutting her hair was because Asagai had told her she was acting like an assimilationist, which made herfeel bad for not acting like an African-American.
This dream Beneatha has on making the world a better place, by curing people as a doctor, came greatly from an experience she witnessed with her brother when they were young; they used to take their sledges out in wintertime and slide down the only hills they had, which were the “ice-covered stone steps of some houses down the street”. “...one day a kid named Rufus came down too fast and hit the sidewalk...and (...) his face just split open right there in front of” them. By seeing “what one person could do for another, fix him up − sew up the problem, make him alright again” she started lighting up this desire inside of her of wanting to do the same, “...it was one concerete 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...”
Anyhow, what Benetha had not realized beforehand was that all this time she had had to rely on the insurance money from her father’s death and the investments made by her brother to finally understand that becoming a doctor was what she wanted to, and this greatly influenced her. When she recognizes this dependence, she gains a new perspective on her dream and a new energy to attain it in her own way; she realizes she can change the fact that “Man is foul! And the human race deserves its misery!” because she can dream, and see the end of the long line called life. This realization also brings her closer to Walter, her brother. While earlier she called him, “Monsieur le petit bourgeois noir”, “Symbol of a Rising Class! Entrepeneur! Titan of the system!” and said he was “not a man. (...) nothing but a toothless rat.” and blamed him for his unsuccessful investments by questioning his manhood (“Did you dream of yachts on Lake Michigan, Brother? Did you see yourself on that Great Day sitting down at the Conference Table, surrounded by all the might bald-headed men in America? All halted, waiting, breathless, waiting for your pronouncements on industry? Waiting for you − Chairman of the Board? I look at you and I see the final triumph of stupidity in the world!”) she eventually recognizes his strength, a sign that she has become able to appreciate him.
Yet the woman who used to say he was no brother of hers and that there was “nothing left to love” in that individual, as well saying that she despised him for kneeling down like a beggar, turns out to be the one who says, “That’s what the man said.” after he tells Mr. Lindner that they didn’t want his money.
***
As the matriarch of the family, Lena Younger, also known as Mama, feels it is more than her obligation to encourage dreaming in her house; she, herself, constantly emphasizes her wish to move into a bigger residence, of their own, where they could each have their own bedroom and live as decent people,
“Been thinking that we maybe could meet the notes on a little old two-storey somewhere, with a yard where Travis could play in the summer- time...”.
In addition to that, Mama does not tolerate the fact that members of her family put material wealth in a higher position than dreams.
“Oh − So now it’s life. Money is life. Once upon a time freedom used to be life − now it’s money. I guess the world really do change...”
When her son, Walter, tells her his idea of investing the insurance money in a liquor store venue, she condemns his materialistic plan and explains that she will not take part in such a hedonistic business.
“Well − whether they drinks it or not ain’t none of my business. But whether I go into business selling it to ‘em is, and I don’t want that on my ledger this late in life.”
Mama is described as a traditional, old mother, in her early sixties; she’s illustrated as a beautiful, full-bodied, strong woman, with a dark-brown face, surrounded by the whiteness of her hair. She’s principled, God-fearing and believes in freedom and dignity. Throughout the play, the audience becomes aware of the fact that Mama is extremely Christian too, due to many comments she makes, particularly to her daughter, Beneatha, who shows progressive and Un-Christian feelings towards God, but also to Ruth, her niece, when she considers aborting the baby she awaits,
“Now don’t you start, child. It’s too early in the morning to be talking about money. It ain’t Christian.” (to Ruth, when she asks what were they supposed to do with the cheque they were to receive).
“If you use the Lord’s name just one more time −”
“Now that will do. I just ain’t going to have you ‘round here reciting the scriptures in vain − you hear me?” (both to Beaneatha when she insists on saying the Lord’s name in vain).
“’She’ − What doctor you went to?” (Mama suspiciously asks Ruth, as if almost positive that she had gone visit the abortionist).
“You went to see that woman, didn’t you?” (Here she angrily questions Ruth about her going to do the miscarriage).
Mama can be, actually, considered the best type of black person there is; “coming from five generations of people who was slaves and sharecroppers”, she will do whatever it takes to fight for her family’s rights and although she can sometimes see her son as “a disgrace” to his “father’s memory”, and think she should sometimes “slow down and see life a little more like it is”, she’ll never give up on any of her family’s dreams, even if they are too high, for they are the most precious things in the entire world. Besides, she knows they “ain’t never been that dead inside.”
One of Mama’s best saying was directed to Beneatha after she says there is nothing left to love, regarding her brother, Walter. Lena immediatley responds, “There is always something left to love. And if you ain’t learned that, you ain’t learned nothing. (...) 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 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 it hisself ‘cause the world done whipped him so.”
As you can observe from Mama’s character, there is a slight reference to Martin Luther King, who said, “I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. (...) I have a dream that one day, (...) little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers. (...) I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight, and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together.”
