L O R R A I N E H A N S B E R R Y

A Raisin in the Sun

Characters
RUTH YOUNGER GEORGE MURCHISON

TRAVIS YOUNGER MRS. JOHNSON

WALTER LEE YOUNGER (BROTHER) KARL LINDNER

BENEATHA YOUNGER BOBO

LENA YOUNGER (MAMA) MOVING MEN

JOSEPH ASAGAI

The action of the play is set in Chicago’s South side, sometime
between World War II and the present.

Act I

Scene I Friday morning.
Scene II The following morning.

Act II

Scene I Later, the same day.

Scene II Friday night, a few weeks later.
Scene III Moving day, one week later.

Act III

An hour later.

ACT I

S C E N E I

The YOUNGER living room would be a comfortable and well-
ordered room if it were not for a number of indestructible contra-
dictions to this state of being. Its furnishings are typical and un-

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distinguished and their primary feature now is that they have
clearly had to accommodate the living of too many people for too
many years—and they are tired. Still, we can see that at some time,
a time probably no longer remembered by the family (except per-
haps 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.

That was a long time ago. Now the once loved pattern of the
couch upholstery has to fight to show itself from under acres of
crocheted doilies and couch covers which have themselves finally
come to be more important than the upholstery. And here a table
or a chair has been moved to disguise the worn places in the carpet;
but the carpet has fought back by showing its weariness, with
depressing uniformity, elsewhere on its surface.

Weariness has, in fact, won in this room. Everything has been
polished, washed, sat on, used, scrubbed too often. All pretenses
but living itself have long since vanished from the very atmosphere
of this room.

Moreover, a section of this room, for it is not really a room unto
itself, though the landlord’s lease would make it seem so, slopes
backward to provide a small kitchen area, where the family pre-
pares the meals that are eaten in the living room proper, which
must also serve as dining room. The single window that has been
provided for these “two” rooms is located in this kitchen area.
The sole natural light the family may enjoy in the course of a day
is only that which fights it way through this little window.

At left, a door leads to a bedroom which is shared by MAMA
and her daughter, BENEATHA. At right, opposite, is a second room
(which in the beginning of the life of this apartment was probably
the breakfast room) which serves as a bedroom for WALTER and
his wife, RUTH.

Time Sometime between World War II and the present.

Place Chicago’s South side.

At rise It is morning dark in the living room. TRAVIS is asleep
on the make-down bed at center. An alarm clock sounds from
within the bedroom at right, and presently RUTH enters from that
room and closes the door behind her. She crosses sleepily toward

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A R A I S I N IN THE SUN Act I Scene I

the window. As she passes her sleeping son she reaches down and
shakes him a little. At the window she raises the shade and a dusky
Southside morning light comes in feebly. She fills a pot with water
and puts it on to boil. She calls to the boy, between yawns, in a
slightly muffled voice.

RUTH is about thirty. We can see that she was a pretty girl, even
exceptionally so, but now it is apparent that life has been little
that she expected, and disappointment has already begun to hang
in her face. In a few years, before thirty-five even, she will be
known among her people as a “settled woman.”

She crosses to her son and gives him a good, final, rousing shake.

RUTH: Come on now, boy, it’s seven thirty! (Her son sits up at
last, in a stupor of sleepiness.) I say hurry up, Travis! You ain’t
the only person in the world got to use a bathroom! (The child,
a sturdy, handsome little boy of ten or eleven, drags himself out
of the bed and almost blindly takes his towels and “today’s
clothes” from drawers and a closet and goes out to the bath-
room, which is in an outside hall and which is shared by another
family or families on the same floor. RUTH crosses to the bed-
room door at right and opens it and calls in to her husband.)
Walter Lee! . . . It’s after seven thirty! Lemme see you do some
waking up in there now! (She waits.) You better get up from
there, man! It’s after seven thirty I tell you. (She waits again.)
All right, you just go ahead and lay there and next thing you
know Travis be finished and Mr. Johnson’ll be in there and
you’ll be fussing and cussing round here like a madman! And
be late too! (She waits, at the end of patience.) Walter Lee-
it’s time for you to GET UP!

She waits another second and then starts to go into the bedroom,
but is apparently satisfied that her husband has begun to get up.
She stops, pulls the door to, and returns to the kitchen area. She
wipes her face with a moist cloth and runs her fingers through her
sleep-disheveled hair in a vain effort and ties an apron around her
housecoat. The bedroom door at right opens and her husband
stands in the doorway in his pajamas, which are rumpled and
mismated. He is a lean, intense young man in his middle thirties,
inclined to quick nervous movements and erratic speech habits—
and always in his voice there is a quality of indictment.

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WALTER: Is he out yet?
RUTH: What you mean out? He ain’t hardly got in there good

yet.
WALTER (wandering in, still more oriented to sleep than to a new

day): Well, what was you doing all that yelling for if I can’t
even get in there yet? (Stopping and thinking.) Check coming
today?

RUTH: They said Saturday and this is just Friday and I hopes to
God you ain’t going to get up here first thing this morning and
start talking to me ’bout no money—’cause I ’bout don’t want
to hear it.

WALTER: Something the matter with you this morning?
RUTH: No—I’m just sleepy as the devil. What kind of eggs you

want?
WALTER: Not scrambled. (RUTH starts to scramble eggs.) Paper

come? (RUTH points impatiently to the rolled up Tribune on the
table, and he gets it and spreads it out and vaguely reads the
front page.) Set off another bomb yesterday.

RUTH (maximum indifference): Did they?
WALTER (looking up): What’s the matter with you?
RUTH: Ain’t nothing the matter with me. And don’t keep asking

me that this morning.
WALTER: Ain’t nobody bothering you. (reading the news of the

day absently again) Say Colonel McCormick is sick.
RUTH (affecting tea-party interest): Is he now? Poor thing.
WALTER (sighing and looking at his watch): Oh, me. (He waits.)

Now what is that boy doing in that bathroom all this time? He
just going to have to start getting up earlier. I can’t be being late
to work on account of him fooling around in there.

RUTH (turning on him): Oh, no he ain’t going to be getting up no
earlier no such thing! It ain’t his fault that he can’t get to bed
no earlier nights ’cause he got a bunch of crazy good-for-nothing
clowns sitting up running their mouths in what is supposed to
be his bedroom after ten o’clock at night. . .

WALTER: That’s what you mad about, ain’t it? The things I want
to talk about with my friends just couldn’t be important in your
mind, could they?

He rises and finds a cigarette in her handbag on the table and

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crosses to the little window and looks out, smoking and deeply
enjoying this first one.

RUTH (almost matter of factly, a complaint too automatic to de-
serve emphasis): Why you always got to smoke before you eat
in the morning?

WALTER (at the window): Just look at ’em down there . . . Running
and racing to work . . . (He turns and faces his wife and watches
her a moment at the stove, and then, suddenly) You look young
this morning, baby.

RUTH (indifferently): Yeah?
WALTER: Just for a second—stirring them eggs. Just for a second

it was—you looked real young again. (He reaches for her; she
crosses away. Then, drily) It’s gone now—you look like yourself
again!

RUTH: Man, if you don’t shut up and leave me alone.
WALTER (looking out to the street again): First thing a man ought

to learn in life is not to make love to no colored woman first
thing in the morning. You all some eeeevil people at eight o’clock
in the morning.

TRAVIS appears in the hall doorway, almost fully dressed and quite
wide awake now, his towels and pajamas across his shoulders. He
opens the door and signals for his father to make the bathroom in
a hurry.)

TRAVIS (watching the bathroom): Daddy, come on!

WALTER gets his bathroom utensils and flies out to the bathroom.

RUTH: Sit down and have your breakfast, Travis.
TRAVIS: Mama, this is Friday, (gleefully) Check coming tomor-

row, huh?
RUTH: You get your mind off money and eat your breakfast.
TRAVIS (eating): This is the morning we supposed to bring the fifty

cents to school.
RUTH: Well, I ain’t got no fifty cents this morning.
TRAVIS: Teacher say we have to.
RUTH: I don’t care what teacher say. I ain’t got it. Eat your break-

fast, Travis.
TRAVIS: I am eating.
RUTH: Hush up now and just eat!

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The boy gives her an exasperated look for her lack of
understanding, and eats grudgingly.

TRAVIS: You think Grandmama would have it?
RUTH: No! And I want you to stop asking your grandmother for

money, you hear me?
TRAVIS (outraged): Gaaaleee! I don’t ask her, she just gimme it

sometimes!
RUTH: Travis Willard Younger—I got too much on me this morn-

ing to be—
TRAVIS: Mabe Daddy —
RUTH: Travisl

The boy hushes abruptly. They are both quiet and tense for several
seconds.

TRAVIS (presently): Could I maybe go carry some groceries in front
of the supermarket for a little while after school then?

RUTH: Just hush, I said. (Travis jabs his spoon into his cereal bowl
viciously, and rests his head in anger upon his fists.) If you
through eating, you can get over there and make your bed.

The boy obeys stiffly and crosses the room, almost mechanically,
to the bed and more or less folds the bedding into a heap, then
angrily gets his books and cap.

TRAVIS (sulking and standing apart from her unnaturally): I’m
gone.

RUTH (looking up from the stove to inspect him automatically):
Come here. (He crosses to her and she studies his head.) If you
don’t take this comb and fix this here head, you better! (TRAVIS
puts down his books with a great sigh of oppression, and crosses
to the mirror. His mother mutters under her breath about his
“slubbornness.”) ‘Bout to march out of here with that head
looking just like chickens slept in it! I just don’t know where
you get your stubborn ways . . . And get your jacket, too. Looks
chilly out this morning.

TRAVIS (with conspicuously brushed hair and jacket): I’m gone.
RUTH: Get carfare and milk money — (waving one finger) —and not

a single penny for no caps, you hear me?
TRAVIS (with sullen politeness): Yes’m.

He turns in outrage to leave. His mother watches after him as in

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his frustration he approaches the door almost comically. When she
speaks to him, her voice has become a very gentle tease.

RUTH (mocking, as she thinks he would say it): Oh, Mama makes
me so mad sometimes, I don’t know what to do! (She waits and
continues to his back as he stands stock-still in front of the door.)
I wouldn’t kiss that woman good-bye for nothing in this world
this morning! (The boy finally turns around and rolls his eyes
at her, knowing the mood has changed and he is vindicated; he
does not, however, move toward her yet.) Not for nothing in
this world! (She finally laughs aloud at him and holds out her
arms to him and we see that it is a way between them, very old
and practiced. He crosses to her and allows her to embrace
him warmly but keeps his face fixed with masculine rigidity.
She holds him back from her presently and looks at him and
runs her fingers over the features of his face. With utter gentle-
ness—) Now—whose little old angry man are you?

TRAVIS (the masculinity and gruffness start to fade at last.): Aw
gaalee—Mama . . .

RUTH (mimicking): Aw—gaaaaalleeeee, Mama! (She pushes him,
with rough playfulness and finality, toward the door.) Get on
out of here or you going to be late.

TRAVIS (in the face of love, new aggressiveness): Mama, could I
please go carry groceries?

RUTH: Honey, it’s starting to get so cold evenings.
WALTER (coming in from the bathroom and drawing a make-

believe gun from a make-believe holster and shooting at his son):
What is it he wants to do?

RUTH: Go carry groceries after school at the supermarket.
WALTER: Well, let him go …
TRAVIS (quickly, to the ally): I have to —she won’t gimme the fifty

cents . . .
WALTER (to his wife only): Why not?
RUTH (simply, and with flavor): ‘Cause we don’t have it.
WALTER (to RUTH only): What you tell the boy things like that

for? (Reaching down into his pants with a rather important
gesture) Here, son —

(He hands the boy the coin, but his eyes are directed to his wife’s.
TRAVIS takes the money happily.)

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TRAVIS: Thanks, Daddy.
He starts out. RUTH watches both of them with murder in her eyes.
WALTER stands and stares back at her with defiance, and suddenly
reaches into his pocket again on an afterthought.
WALTER (without even looking at his son, still staring hard at his

wife): In fact, here’s another fifty cents . . . Buy yourself some
fruit today—or take a taxicab to school or something!

TRAVIS: Whoopee —
He leaps up and clasps his father around the middle with his legs,
and they face each other in mutual appreciation; slowly WALTER
LEE peeks around the boy to catch the violent rays from his wife’s
eyes and draws his head back as if shot.
WALTER: You better get down now—and get to school, man.
TRAVIS (at the door): O.K. Good-bye. (He exits.)
WALTER (after him, pointing with pride): That’s my boy. (She

looks at him in disgust and turns back to her work.) You know
what I was thinking ’bout in the bathroom this morning?

RUTH: No.
WALTER: How come you always try to be so pleasant!
RUTH: What is there to be pleasant ’bout!
WALTER: You want to know what I was thinking ’bout in the

bathroom or not!
RUTH: I know what you thinking ’bout.
WALTER (ignoring her): ‘Bout what me and Willy Harris was talk-

ing about last night.
RUTH (immediately—a refrain): Willy Harris is a good-for-nothing

loudmouth.
WALTER: Anybody who talks to me has got to be a good-for-

nothing loudmouth, ain’t he? And what you know about who
is just a good-for-nothing loudmouth? Charlie Atkins was just
a “good-for-nothing loudmouth” too, wasn’t he! When he
wanted me to go in the dry-cleaning business with him. And
now—he’s grossing a hundred thousand a year. A hundred thou-
sand dollars a year! You still call him a loudmouth!

RUTH (bitterly): Oh, Walter Lee . . .
She folds her head on her arms over the table.
WALTER (rising and coming to her and standing over her): You

tired, ain’t you? Tired of everything. Me, the boy, the way we

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live—this beat-up hole—everything. Ain’t you? (She doesn’t
look up, doesn’t answer.) 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?

RUTH: Walter, please leave me alone.
WALTER: A man needs a woman to back him up …
RUTH: Walter —
WALTER: Mama would listen to you. You know she listen to you

more than she do me and Bennie. She think more of you. All
you have to do is just sit down with her when you drinking your
coffee one morning and talking ’bout things like you do and—
(He sits down beside her and demonstrates graphically what he
thinks her methods and tone should be.)—you just sip your cof-
fee, see, and say easy like that you been thinking ’bout that deal
Walter Lee is so interested in, ’bout the store and all, and sip
some more coffee, like what you saying ain’t really that impor-
tant to you—And the next thing you know, she be listening good
and asking you questions and when I come home—I can tell her
the details. This ain’t no fly-by-night proposition, baby. I mean
we figured it out, me and Willy and Bobo.

RUTH (with a frown): Bobo?
WALTER: Yeah. You see, this little liquor store we got in mind cost

seventy-five thousand and we figured the initial investment on
the place be ’bout thirty thousand, see. That be ten thousand
each. Course, there’s a couple of hundred you got to pay so’s
you don’t spend your life just waiting for them clowns to let
your license get approved—

RUTH: You mean graft?
WALTER (frowning impatiently): Don’t call it that. See there, that

just goes to show you what women understand about the world.
Baby, don’t nothing happen for you in this world ‘less you pay
somebody off!

RUTH: Walter, leave me alone! (She raises her head and stares at
him vigorously—then says, more quietly.) Eat your eggs, they
gonna be cold.

WALTER (straightening up from her and looking off): That’s it.
There you are. Man say to his woman: I got me a dream. His
woman say: Eat your eggs. (Sadly, but gaining in power.) Man
say: I got to take hold of this here world, baby! And a woman

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will say: Eat your eggs and go to work. (Passionately now.)
Man say: I got to change my life, I’m choking to death, baby!
And his woman say — (in utter anguish as he brings his fists down
on his thighs)— Your eggs is getting cold!

RUTH (softly): Walter, that ain’t none of our money.
WALTER (not listening at all or even looking at her): This morning,

I was lookin’ in the mirror and thinking about i t . . . I’m thirty-
five years old; I been married eleven years and I got a boy who
sleeps in the living room —(very, very quietly) —and all I got to
give him is stories about how rich white people live . . .

RUTH: Eat your eggs, Walter.
WALTER (slams the table and jumps up): —DAMN MY EGGS —

DAMN ALL THE EGGS THAT EVER WAS!
RUTH: Then go to work.
WALTER (looking up at her): See —I’m trying to talk to you ’bout

myself— (shaking his head with the repetition) —and all you can
say is eat them eggs and go to work.

RUTH (wearily): Honey, you never say nothing new. I listen to you
every day, every night and every morning, and you never say
nothing new. (shrugging) So you would rather be Mr. Arnold
than be his chauffeur. So—I would rather be living in Buck-
ingham Palace.

WALTER: That is just what is wrong with the colored woman in
this world . . . Don’t understand about building their men up
and making ’em feel like they somebody. Like they can do some-
thing.

RUTH (drily, but to hurt): There are colored men who do things.
WALTER: No thanks to the colored woman.
RUTH: Well, being a colored woman, I guess I can’t help myself

none.

She rises and gets the ironing board and sets it up and attacks a
huge pile of rough-dried clothes, sprinkling them in preparation
for the ironing and then rolling them into tight fat balls.

WALTER (mumbling): We one group of men tied to a race of
women with small minds!

His sister BENEATHA enters. She is about twenty, as slim and intense
as her brother. She is not as pretty as her sister-in-law, but her
lean, almost intellectual face has a handsomeness of its own. She

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wears a bright-red flannel nightie, and her thick hair stands wildly
about her head. 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—and perhaps the Midwest rather
than the South has finally—at last—won out in her inflection; but
not altogether, because over all of it is a soft slurring and
transformed use of vowels which is the decided influence of the
Southside. She passes through the room without looking at either
RUTH or WALTER and goes to the outside door and looks, a little
blindly, out to the bathroom. She sees that it has been lost to the
Johnsons. She closes the door with a sleepy vengeance and crosses
to the table and sits down a little defeated.

BENEATHA: I am going to start timing those people.
WALTER: You should get up earlier.
BENEATHA (Her face in her hands. She is still fighting the urge to

go back to bed.): Really—would you suggest dawn? Where’s
the paper?

WALTER (pushing the paper across the table to her as he studies
her almost clinically, as though he has never seen her before):
You a horrible-looking chick at this hour.

BENEATHA (drily): Good morning, everybody.
WALTER (senselessly): How is school coming?
BENEATHA (in the same spirit): Lovely. Lovely. And you know,

biology is the greatest, (looking up at him) I dissected some-
thing that looked just like you yesterday.

WALTER: I just wondered if you’ve made up your mind and every-
thing.

BENEATHA (gaining in sharpness and impatience): And what did I
answer yesterday morning—and the day before that?

RUTH (from the ironing board, like someone disinterested and old):
Don’t be so nasty, Bennie.

BENEATHA (still to her brother): And the day before that and the
day before that!

WALTER (defensively): I’m interested in you. Something wrong
with that? Ain’t many girls who decide—

WALTER and BENEATHA (in unison): —”to be a doctor.” (silence)
WALTER: Have we figured out yet just exactly how much medical

school is going to cost?

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RUTH: Walter Lee, why don’t you leave the girl alone and get out
of here to work?

BENEATHA (exits to the bathroom and bangs on the door): Come
on out of there, please! (She comes back into the room.)

WALTER (looking at his sister intently): You know the check is
coming tomorrow.

BENEATHA (turning on him with a sharpness all her own): That
money belongs to Mama, Walter, and it’s for her to decide how
she wants to use it. I don’t care if she wants to buy a house or
a rocket ship or just nail it up somewhere and look at it. It’s
hers. Not ours—hers.

WALTER (bitterly): Now ain’t that fine! You just got your mother’s
interest at heart, ain’t you, girl? You such a nice girl—but if
Mama got that money she can always take a few thousand and
help you through school too —can’t she?

BENEATHA: I have never asked anyone around here to do anything
for me!

WALTER: No! And the line between asking and just accepting when
the time comes is big and wide —ain’t it!

BENEATHA (with fury): What do you want from me, Brother—that
I quit school or just drop dead, which!

WALTER: I don’t want nothing but for you to stop acting holy
’round here. Me and Ruth done made some sacrifices for you—
why can’t you do something for the family?

RUTH: Walter, don’t be dragging me in it.
WALTER: You are in it—Don’t you get up and go work in some-

body’s kitchen for the last three years to help put clothes on her
back?

RUTH: Oh, Walter—that’s not fair . . .
WALTER: It ain’t that nobody expects you to get on your knees

and say thank you, Brother; thank you, Ruth; thank you,
Mama —and thank you, Travis, for wearing the same pair of
shoes for two semesters —

BENEATHA (dropping to her knees): Well—I do —all right?—thank
everybody! And forgive me for ever wanting to be anything at
all! (pursuing him on her knees across the floor) FORGIVE
ME, FORGIVE ME, FORGIVE ME!

RUTH: Please stop it! Your mama’ll hear you.
WALTER: Who the hell told you you had to be a doctor? If you so

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crazy ’bout messing ’round with sick people—then go be a nurse
like other women—or just get married and be quiet. . .

BENEATHA: Well—you finally got it said . . . It took you three years
but you finally got it said. Walter, give up; leave me alone—it’s
Mama’s money.

WALTER: He was my father, too!
BENEATHA: So what? He was mine, too —and Travis’ grand-

father—but the insurance money belongs to Mama. Picking on
me is not going to make her give it to you to invest in any liquor
stores —(underbreath, dropping into a chair) —and I for one say,
God bless Mama for that!

WALTER (to RUTHJ: See—did you hear? Did you hear!
RUTH: Honey, please go to work.
WALTER: Nobody in this house is ever going to understand me.
BENEATHA: Because you’re a nut.
WALTER: Who’s a nut?
BENEATHA: You—you are a nut. Thee is mad, boy.
WALTER (looking at his wife and his sister from the door, very

sadly): The world’s most backward race of people, and that’s a
fact.

BENEATHA (turning slowly in her chair): And then there are all
those prophets who would lead us out of the wilderness — (WAL-
TER slams out of the house.)—into the swamps!

RUTH: Bennie, why you always gotta be pickin’ on your brother?
Can’t you be a little sweeter sometimes? (Door opens. WALTER
walks in. He fumbles with his cap, starts to speak, clears throat,
looks everywhere but at RUTH. Finally:)

WALTER (to RUTH,): I need some money for carfare.
RUTH (looks at him, then warms; teasing, but tenderly): Fifty

cents? (She goes to her bag and gets money.) Here—take a
taxi!

WALTER exits. MAMA enters. She is a woman in her early sixties,
full-bodied and strong. She is one of those women of a certain
grace and beauty who wear it so unobtrusively that it takes a while
to notice. Her dark-brown face is surrounded by the total
whiteness of her hair, and, being a woman who has adjusted to
many things in life and overcome many more, her face is full of
strength. She has, we can see, wit and faith of a kind that keep her

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eyes lit and full of interest and expectancy. She is, in a word, a
beautiful woman. Her bearing is perhaps most like the noble
bearing of the women of the Hereros of Southwest Africa—rather
as if she imagines that as she walks she still bears a basket or a
vessel upon her head. Her speech, on the other hand, is as careless
as her carriage is precise—she is inclined to slur everything—but
her voice is perhaps not so much quiet as simply soft.

MAMA: Who that ’round here slamming doors at this hour?

She crosses through the room, goes to the window, opens it, and
brings in a feeble little plant growing doggedly in a small pot on
the window sill. She feels the dirt and puts it back out.

RUTH: That was Walter Lee. He and Bennie was at it again.
MAMA: My children and they tempers. Lord, if this little old plant

don’t get more sun than it’s been getting it ain’t never going to
see spring again. (She turns from the window.) What’s the
matter with you this morning, Ruth? You looks right peaked.
You aiming to iron all them things? Leave some for me. I’ll get
to ’em this afternoon. Bennie honey, it’s too drafty for you to
be sitting ’round half dressed. Where’s your robe?

BENEATHA: In the cleaners.
MAMA: Well, go get mine and put it on.
BENEATHA: I’m not cold, Mama, honest.
MAMA: I know—but you so thin . . .
BENEATHA (irritably): Mama, I’m not cold.
MAMA (seeing the make-down bed as TRAVIS has left it): Lord have

mercy, look at that poor bed. Bless his heart—he tries, don’t he?

She moves to the bed TRAVIS has sloppily made up.

RUTH: No—he don’t half try at all ’cause he knows you going to
come along behind him and fix everything. That’s just how come
he don’t know how to do nothing right now—you done spoiled
that boy so.

MAMA (folding bedding): Well—he’s a little boy. Ain’t supposed
to know ’bout housekeeping. My baby, that’s what he is. What
you fix for his breakfast this morning?

RUTH (angrily): I feed my son, Lena!
MAMA: I ain’t meddling— (underbreath; busy-bodyish) I just no-

ticed all last week he had cold cereal, and when it starts getting

499

A R A I S I N IN THE SUN Act I Scene I

this chilly in the fall a child ought to have some hot grits or
something when he goes out in the cold—

RUTH (furious)-. I gave him hot oats—is that all right!
MAMA: I ain’t meddling, (pause) Put a lot of nice butter on it?

(RUTH shoots her an angry look and does not reply.) He likes
lots of butter.

RUTH (exasperated): Lena—
MAMA (To BENEATHA. MAMA is inclined to wander conversationally

sometimes.): What was you and your brother fussing ’bout this
morning?

BENEATHA: It’s not …

Evidence-Interpretation Chart 1 (one of the secondary sources)

MLA Works Cited entry for the source:

“The American Dream in Literature.” Twentieth-Century Literary Criticism, edited by Thomas J.
Schoenberg, vol. 210, Gale, 2009. Gale Literature Criticism, link.gale.com/apps/doc/
H1410002163/LCO?u=txshracd2512&sid=bookmark-LCO&xid=6cbeb43a. Accessed 21
Nov. 2021.

Evidence: Information from the sources you have found that you think would be valuable to use in your research
essay.

Interpretation: The reasons that you think the information is valuable and the ways in which you think you can use
the information in your paper.

Page number
(for hard- copy
sources)

Evidence
Factual information/quotation from the text

Interpretation
Reasons the information is

valuable/way information can be used
in the essay

1.

1. “Yet even as such works were being
produced, some authors were creating literary
works that reflected the downside of the
American Dream.”

1. I will use this quote in the
third body paragraph.

2.

2. “Throughout the twentieth century the
theme of the American Dream and its pitfalls
remained central to American literature. As
the country was roiled by industrialization,
labor unrest, economic and social inequality,
and resentment toward immigration,
American writers reflected the country’s
growing disillusionment with the myth of the
American Dream.”

2. This quote will work in my
third body paragraph to
show the theme of the
shattered American
Dream.

3.

3. “Arthur Miller’s renowned play Death of a
Salesman (1949), Norman Mailer’s novel An
American Dream (1965), and Edward Albee’s
play The American Dream (1961) were
prominent literary works that explored the
nightmarish aspects of the theme of the
American Dream.”

3. This quote will set the
stage for the discussion of
The American Dream in
the play in the
introduction of my essay.

4.

4. 4.

5.

5. 5.

Note: It doesn’t matter how many pieces of evidence you have. You can have 1, 2, 3 (as I have
here), 4, or 5. I wouldn’t have more than 5 or 6, however.