Deconstructing For The Chain Gang: from ‘Raisin in the Sun’ to ‘Clybourne Park’

Posted On 2021-09-18

I had an elective requirement to fill during that last semester, and it was almost a crisis. I wasn’t able to register until several weeks after the window opened (the housing dept was insisting I cough up $6k for a dorm I’d never occupied, pure theft), so I’d already been waitlisted for my first choice and there really wasn’t a second choice. There must have been a demand, because an online option opened up- English 340, Themes of the working class.

It was probably for the best, considering how lockdown messed up that semester. It was online to begin with and the professor made all the modules available from day 1, so I was able to burn through and have most of the semester’s work done by spring break. Which very likely saved my ass as the capstone and other projects came due later.

There were some group elements, but I liked how he structured them as being very clear on who did what. The course’s second module was on ‘Raisin in the Sun’ and its spiritual sequel, ‘Clybourne Park’. I volunteered on this one to tackle the summaries; it was the biggest chunk of writing but I’d seen the others’ writing and I wanted to make sure the bulk of the submission was done right. As it was there was a whole segment on themes that “our group” totally boned because that one guy kinda phoned it in.

So there’s no real analysis here, but call it a paraphrased edition. Got a test coming up? Hey, roll the dice. I tried to be thorough with the salient details.

Detailed Summary – an in-depth summary of every scene in the two plays

A Raisin in the Sun

(Act 1, scene 1) ‘A Raisin in the Sun’ opens on a Friday morning in the Younger household. The Youngers are African Americans in a 1950’s Chicago tenement that has once been a cozy home. Extensive stage direction is used to create a felt sense of place, and to establish the characters in the readers’ imaginations before they even speak. Weary wife and mother Ruth Younger is up early, waking up her son and husband to get their days underway. As the family wakes, the subject of the day is a forthcoming life insurance windfall. Her son Travis is excited for the potential but mindful more of the world that he knows- he wants to establish his own developing manhood and is willing to cart groceries if that’s what it takes. Husband Walter has plans for the money, being paid to his mother upon the death of his father, “Big Walter”. He hopes to make an investment in a liquor store as a step towards advancing his family beyond the station afforded by their race. Ruth is ambivalent and would prefer some room be left for his mother’s preference. Their interaction alternates from compassionate to combative; Walter is affectionate but sees her conditional support as detrimental to both his ambitions and the fortunes of their race. He is similarly dismissive of his sister Beneatha. She aspires to be a doctor and to connect with her African roots; but her progresive lifestyle does not fit well within the household. Mama is introduced last, presenting adoration to grandson Travis, compassion to Ruth, and a stern rebuke to Beneatha’s outspoken atheism. She has seen a great deal in her life, but there is a gap between herself and her children that confounds her. As the scene concludes, Ruth collapses to the floor in seeming exhaustion.

(Act 1, scene 2) The next day, Beneatha continues to explore her identity. She invites over a potential suitor, a Nigerian student who challenges her to consider how well her Westernized appearance reflects her actual person. Joseph Asagai is well-meaning and charming, but his presence plants a disruptive seed. The arrival of the insurance check is a moment of celebration that is quickly sobered by remembrance, and of Walter’s intentions for the money. Mama recalls Big Walter as having failings but in being unwaveringly devoted to his family. This contrasts with Walter’s seeming devotion to the thought of financial advancement. Mama looks back on a life of overcoming existential peril, but Walter sees his parents as having been really struggling for money without realizing it. So determined is he to make his case and be heard that he becomes oblivious to the pleas of his wife, who is trying to find a way to tell her angry husband that she’s pregnant. That news is broken to Walter by Mama as she declines to support his investment in liquor sales on moral grounds. After denouncing Beneatha’s progressive blasphemy, her next rebuke is to Walter when he responds with speechlessness to Ruth’s intentions to end her pregnancy. Ruth is not just tired; she is uncertain, and has already begun to make arrangements. While Mama speaks from a place of understanding Ruth’s position, she speaks also of unacceptable decisions and a deep disappointment in her son for failing to live up to her memory of his father.

(Act 2, scene 1) Later that afternoon, Beneatha models for Ruth the traditional Nigerian dress that had been given to her by Asagai that morning. Walter returns home as she dances to the rhythm of an African folk record. He has clearly been drinking and gets caught up in Beneatha’s song, climbing atop a table and experiencing a moment of clarity on behalf of his “Black brothers”. Their moment is interrupted by the entrance of George (another of Beneatha’s suitors), and Beneatha’s mood is interrupted by his disapproval of her cultural dress. Her defiant compromise is to concede on the outfit while proudly showing off her new un-straightened “natural” hairstyle. Walter is dismissive of both her changing style and George’s social stature, and remains compelled by that negativity as they leave and he and Ruth are left alone. Walter is still bitter about her disapproval of his liquor store idea and insists to her face that he is a man alone, but then softens as he sees the damage his words are doing. A moment of reconciliation between the two is brought to a premature end as Mama returns from her day’s business. Her news that she’s used the insurance money to purchase a house brings joy to Ruth. A home of their own with windows and a yard was more than she could have hoped for on behalf of the child she carried. Walter on the other hand has had his plans for financial security dashed. On learning that the house is in the White neighborhood of Clybourne Park, he dismisses their optimism with a certaintainty that they’d only bought into a future of racial hostility.

(Act 2, scene 2) A few weeks later, this scene consists largely of two conversations. First, Beneatha returns home with George after an evening out. Her attention is deep in the subject of their discussion. George meanwhile would prefer to change the subject. He tells Beneatha directly that he bores of her ideas, and that he wishes she would be content to be satisfied with her looks. He dismisses her pursuit of an education entirely. Beneatha invites him to leave just as Mama arrives, and the two women have a moment of understanding. Beneatha declares George a fool, and Mama sees that her daughter has made a final decision. When she responds with support, Beneatha is heartened by her mother’s acknowledgement. Walter meanwhile has not been to work in three days. He continues to mourn Mama’s decision to buy a home, and has been literally wandering the countryside contemplating his lot in life. Mama sees him struggling to be the man he thinks he’s supposed to be, and feels responsible as a parent. She fears that her determination has been taking away from his opportunity to grow into the head of a household. She decides to give Walter what’s left of the money – after the down payment and Beneatha’s tuition – for him to use on behalf of the family. Walter is overjoyed and embraces his own son with a newfound optimism, describing to Travis the middle-class life he imagines for them.

(Act 2, scene 3) A week later, the Younger household is transformed. To Beneatha, Ruth describes a night out with Walter reminiscent of a teenage date, as he takes her in his arms for a dance there in the living room. When the doorbell rings the spell is broken. At the door is Karl Lindner from the “Clybourne Park Improvement Association”. Proferring brotherhood, he describes how neighborly relations are best maintained when people stay with their own. Karl tells Walter that the White residents of Clybourne Park were willing to buy out their family’s interest in the home to prevent the occupancy of a Black family in the neighborhood. Walter is incensed and directs Karl to leave. Mama is discouraged when she hears the news, but the celebratory mood is restored as the family unveils a set of gifts for her garden-to-be. She has a moment of her own here; these are the first gifts she’s received in her life that didn’t have a Christmas attached. The mood in the room then takes another turn with the arrival of Walter’s business partner, Bobo. Bobo was to’ve gone into town the day before with their associate Willy, to grease the palms of local permit-issuing officials. But Bobo describes to Walter and the family how the trip never happened. Willy had never shown up and he had taken their money with him. As Walter breaks down, he reveals that every penny he’d been given – Beneatha’s school money included – was lost.  They are devastated by the news and Mama is forced to restrain herself from striking Walter in anger.

(Act 3, scene 1) An hour later, the family is still absorbing the news and what the loss means for their futures. Joseph Asagai has come by to visit with Beneatha and to help pack, and to offer consolation when he hears the news. Beneatha is profoundly discouraged. She describes the childhood experience that got her into medicine, into wanting to help others. But in Walter’s actions she sees a problem of humanity beyond her ability to fix. Both her means and her inspiration are seemingly lost. Asagai argues that life is not about the solving of a single problem, but the overcoming of ever-more challenging obstacles. He describes his intentions to return with his education to Nigeria, and his expectations that he will fail many times in his efforts to improve life back home. She hasn’t lost the money, he tells her, as it had never been hers. Even beyond that, he encourages her not to dwell on what she was offered by the passing of her father, but to look to the building of something entirely new by his side in Africa. Beneatha doesn’t know what to do with his offer; there is simply too much going on. As he departs, Asagai encourages her to consider his offer, and to have confidence in her own judgement. He is followed out the door by Walter in a frantic rush, to Beneatha’s taunts. Mama and Ruth meanwhile are considering the implications to their upcoming homeownership. Certain that the payments were too much for the distressed family to bear, Mama looks instead to seeing what they can do to refresh where they are. The idea of not moving however brings Ruth back to the depression and uncertainty she’d been feeling towards her pregnancy. It’s at this moment that Walter returns, announcing a plan. He’s paid a call to Karl from the Clybourne Welcoming Committee, and offered to accept the community’s purchase of the house. Their money would replace what he had lost. While Mama had been resigned moments before to losing the house, this is not how she imagined it happening. She sees Walter’s plan as a capitulation to everything she and Big Walter had struggled to overcome and she urges him to reconsider. Ruth and Beneatha are similarly offended. When Karl arrives to complete the transaction, Mama calls Travis to her side as a witness. She tells Walter that she wants his son to see what his father is doing, to see what had become of the family’s judgement after five proud generations. Caught up in that moment, fixed in the gaze of both his son and his lineage, Walter has a change of heart. He tells Karl that the Youngers would work to be good neighbors, but that they wouldn’t be bought. It would be upon the community itself to decide if they would be neighborly in return. When Karl leaves, the play concludes with the Youngers loading up the moving truck and looking to the future.  

Clybourne Park

(Act 1) In 1959, Russ and Bev are preparing to sell their home. Over the course of the afternoon, overlapping interactions with neighbors and friends place a spotlight on some of the tensions lurking just behind the scenes. Their first visitor is Jim, a young pastor in the community. Conversation reveals a family tragedy to do with their son Kenneth, who died after returning home from the war. While Jim and Bev speak of healing, Russ takes discussion of his son as an intrusion and responds with anger. That tension however is set aside as a courtesy upon the arrival of their neighbors, Karl and his deaf wife Betsy. The implicit racism of the period – depicted earlier between Bev and her housekeeper – is made explicit as Karl voices opposition to the home’s impending sale to a Black family (the Youngers, from ‘A Raisin in the Sun’). Karl brings Bev’s Black housekeeper (Francine) and her husband into the conversation to show how different and therefore incompatible their cultural practices can be. Over Russ’ objections, Karl describes the economic consequences that will be “suffered” by the remaining White residents should Black residents continue to arrive. Tensions that had been quieted earlier are given new voice as Karl persists. Bev is uncomfortable with both her husband’s anger and Karl’s outright bigotry, while maintaining her own form of patronizing racism (offering Francine’s husband money for the awkwardness of their company). Betsy’s deafness is used to effect, and her confusion at what’s going on adds to a developing atmosphere of chaos. Karl’s insistence on “speaking freely” in Russ and Bev’s living room, and his indignation at Russ’ growing offense, provokes Russ into an outburst. When Karl suggests sabotaging the sale with innuendo over Kenneth’s death, Russ reveals that communal pretense as the source of an anger that has eclipsed any racial preferences he might have. His son – no less White than he – had been no more welcome than the incoming Black buyers, his household had been stigmatized by Kenneth’s suicide, and he would have no more of these neighbors. Their presence is rejected as categorically as their arguments, leaving Russ and Bev to cool down while contemplating their new routines. The transition from conflict to coexistence is abrupt but tender in its own way, as if the heated words had been a necessary release of the tensions between them.

(Act 2) Fifty years later in the same apartment, some things have changed while others have remained constant. Lindsey and Steve are the new owners in the now-predominantly Black community and plan to rebuild. They are being represented by Kathy, daughter to Act 1’s Betsy. Lena (related to both Act 1’s Francine, and ‘Raisin’s Mama Younger) and her husband Kevin are there to represent the neighborhood’s opposition to the new design. The purpose of the gathering is to explore negotiating a redesign of the new home, but distractions from the subject delay that work just as the participants delay their arrival to the point of true contention. Though their conversation touches on many of the same racially-charged facets of homeownership and community addressed years before, their modern ‘civility’ is much more circumspect. Steve and Lindsey speak of changes to property values with the coming and going of crime, but not of the economic costs of having Black neighbors. Lena and Kevin defer to the character of the community, but not of the White tendency to destroy culture in favor of economy. Prefacing a shift away from moral high grounds entirely, Lena dives headfirst into what Karl Lindner in the first act had only offered as a threat- revealing the fact of Kenneth’s suicide as a deterrent. Lindsey is aghast but steadfast. When conflict between these players arrives, the animosity is more widespread and generalized. The confrontation quickly becomes Steve and Kevin (and Lena!) trading racist jokes in a perverse contest to determine who is the least racist among them. Years before, Russ’s grief and anger over his son provided a moral counterpoint to racism, and that fight was brought to an end by one man’s determination that some things were more important than skin color. Today there is no such external moral pressure exerting itself, there are only the two couples seemingly struggling against their own modern moral constructs. Absent a compelling external (non-racial) frame of reference, the second act concludes with even less resolution than the first. Lena and Kevin’s failure to persuade Lindsey and Steve mirrors Karl’s failure to persuade Russ. Lindsey and Steve however face not the new beginning that Russ and Bev had contemplated, but perhaps something closer to the rejection that Walter had worried about when moving into Clybourne Park decades earlier.