What happens to a raisin in the sun?

Today we finished talking about A Raisin in the Sun in the twelfth grade. 

A few of Mama's speeches towards the end produced fascinating comments. One of them she makes after the most emotional moment in the play, in my opinion: Walter Lee, the man of this African American family, agrees to sell the house he bought in a white neighbourhood back to its other residents, who are so keen to keep blacks out that they offer to buy the house back at a financial gain to Walter's family. The shame and humiliation implied by such a "sell-out" is heavily dramatised in his speech and his body language, in such a way that his wife, sister, and mother are appalled. After this lowest of low points for Walter, Mama delivers this speech to his sister, who has just declared that Walter is "no brother of mine." 

There is always something left to love. And if you ain’t learned that, you ain’t learned nothing. (Looking at her) 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! When you starts measuring somebody, measure him right, child, measure him right. Make sure you done taken into account what hills and valleys he come through before he got to wherever he is.

We talked about the nature of this monologue, how it comes rather as a sermon delivering a moral message at the end of the play. We considered how Mama might want every audience member to consider how he might show more love to a person in his life who has been "whipped" by the world, and who is having a hard time "believing in hisself." 

Then we considered whether we had been measuring Walter Lee fairly -- whether we had taken into account the valleys and hills he's come through in order to get where he got. I asked the class to consider moments in the play that informed our opinions of Walter, and to consider whether we had been sympathetic to the hills and valleys he'd come through to get to that point. In one class, Amr championed Walter. He brought us back to the moment when Walter took three days off work to tool around in a car and go drinking and listening to jazz. "He took the car and drove away, but then he came back," pointed out Amr. I had had absolutely no sympathy for Walter at that moment, but Amr's comment highlighted that many men who are as frustrated as Walter is don't ever make the literal U-turn Walter did.

In the other class, Anas pointed to Walter's strong father, the man who worked hard, provided food and shelter and education for his son, and believed in his dreams. "Walter should have it together more," Anas said, since he came from a stable family environment himself. Anas's comment brings up the difficulty of identifying what goes wrong when a child struggles to succeed, even according to his own measures of success. Is it the parents? Why do good parents have kids who can't seem to gain traction in this world?

Opinions differed over whether the end is uplifting or foreboding. I am firmly in the foreboding camp. Look at the final stage direction for Mama, as the family packs to move to the new house:

Mama stands, at last alone in the living room, her plant on the table before her as the lights start to come down. She looks around at all the walls and ceilings and suddenly, despite herself, while the children call below, a great heaving thing rises in her and she puts her fist to her mouth to stifle it, takes a final desperate look, pulls her coat about her, pats her hat and goes out. The lights dim down. The door opens and she comes back in, grabs her plant, and goes out for the last time.

Curtain.

We spent time today discussing the "great heaving thing" that rises in Mama. I love how the students expand my understanding of the text though. I thought Mama was reacting in fear of all the problems that her family still faces: stigma, or even violence, in the white neighbourhood; financial struggles, especially meeting their mortgage on the house; unease in Walter and Ruth's marriage; how to provide for Ruth's coming baby; how to pay for Beneatha's medical school; how to help Walter pursue his dreams of starting a business. 

I always pose the question first, and only sometimes share my interpretation afterward. Today I was surprised and enlightened when the students traced Mama's anxiety to leaving the apartment she'd bought with her husband so many years ago. She was, after all, leaving the house she shared with him, the house in which she had watched her family grow into what it was. I am impressed that they were immediately perceptive to her matriarchal connection with her house itself. I feel so little connection to my current house that I can't relate to Mama in that moment as well as they might be able to, as seniors looking at leaving for college in less than a year.