A Raisin in the Sun

Act I

Reading Check

1. the Southside of Chicago, specifically “sometime between World War II and the present”

2. Saturday

3. bagging groceries

4. a bribe

5. Lena (“Mama”) and Walter Younger Sr.

6. It’s the money from the life insurance policy on Walter Sr., who has just passed away.

7. Ruth

Quiz

1. A. With Walter and his friends in the living room, Ruth is worried that Travis is kept awake.

2. B. Walter is proud and doesn’t think Travis should know that his family doesn’t have a lot of money.

3. D. Walter believes that women should support their husbands. He says, “Man say to his woman: I got me a dream. His woman say: Eat your eggs. Man say: I got to take hold of this here world, baby! And a woman will say: Eat your eggs and go to work. Man say: I got to change my life, I’m choking to death, baby! And his woman say—Your eggs is getting cold!”

4. C. Ruth senses that Walter Jr. needs something that she can’t provide, and she thinks it might be this chance.

5. B. Mama doesn’t want to invest in liquor in particular.

6. A. After slapping her, Mama makes her say that “In my mother’s house there is still God” (37).

7. B. Mama and Big Walter had planned to buy a house after a year of renting, but they never did. Mama tells Ruth that she always wanted a garden.

8. B. Beneatha told him, “Mr. Asagai—I want very much to talk with you. About Africa. You see, Mr. Asagai, I am looking for my identity!” (48).

9. D. Beneatha is struck by the fact that Asagai had them sent by his sister from Nigeria.

10. A. She would’ve donated it to the church or put it in a savings account. She doesn’t think that $10,000 is a fair valuation of her husband’s life.

11. C. Ruth is considering an abortion, and she puts a payment down on the procedure.

12. Walter is obsessed with money, and Mama doesn’t feel like she understands Beneatha.

13. Alaiyo, which is Yoruba for “One for Whom Bread—Food—Is Not Enough”

Act II

Reading Check

1. dancing to Nigerian music

2.  a house

3. He wants to tell Walter that if he’s not at work tomorrow, he’s fired.

4.  He took her to a movie and held her hand.

5. Karl Lindner

6. Bobo

Quiz

1. B. He tells her that she should change because “we’re going to the theatre—we’re not going to be in it” (71).

2. C. Beneatha exclaims that George is ashamed of his ancestry and says that she “hate[s] assimilationist Negroes!” (71). George insults her use of this term, telling Ruth that it’s “just a college girl’s way of calling people Uncle Toms” (72).

3. A. Mama bought the house to honor the dream she shared with her late husband in providing a house for their children and grandchildren to inherit.

4. C. Clybourne Park is a white neighborhood so they will have to contend with the racism that comes with being a Black family in a white area.

5. B. Feeling like Mama never listened to what he wanted, Walter says that “you butchered up a dream of mine—you—who always talking ‘bout our children’s dreams” (87).

6. D. She paid $3,500 on the down payment; she tells Walter to put $3,000 in a savings account for Beneatha for medical school. Once he does that, she says he can use the rest for himself.

7. B. Lindner mentions several problems that have occurred when people of color have moved into the neighborhood even though the folks who live there “deplore that kind of thing” (103).

8. C. One of the themes of this drama is dreams deferred, and Mama had long put off her dream of owning a house with her late husband; however, she uses the insurance money from his death to make this a reality.

9. A. Walter invested not only the money that Mama gave him but also the money she asked him to set aside for Beneatha.

10. A. He exclaims, “That money is made out of my father’s flesh” when he discovers that Willy has left with it. He recognizes that it symbolized a dream, one that he lost in investing it in untrustworthy people.

11. B. Mama prays for strength, having watched her husband toil day after day during his lifetime.

12. Walter wants to meet with George and his father to discuss his idea of investing in a liquor store.

13. Mama says that she shouldn’t waste her time on a fool when that’s what Beneatha calls him.

14. to buy the house back from them at a gain to them

Act III

Reading Check

1. Asagai

2. Walter

3. the takers and the taken

4. Travis tells them.

5. Their family is proud, and his father earned it.

6. that she is too young

Quiz

1. D. Asagai thinks of moving as a form of progress, which makes him think of Africa.

2. B. As a child, Beneatha was amazed by how a doctor stitched up a boy who had injured his face when she was a child.

3. D. Asagai thinks that giving up is an excuse not to work hard for progress for racial equality.

4. B. Beneatha wonders what happens when the struggle is over, and it leads her to realize that Asagai is asking her to go back to Africa with him.

5. B. Mama feels like her dream has been deferred and that they can’t move, feeling like she has perhaps been too idealistic.

6. C. Mama is ready to give up, but Ruth doesn’t want her to. She offers to work up to 20 hours a day if she needs to.

7. A. Walter is willing to give up his pride any way he needs to in order to get more money from Lindner.

8. A. Hating the idea of emasculating himself in front of Lindner, Walter mumbles the word “man” over and over; he believes, however, it must be done.

9. C. By including Travis in Walter’s conversation with Lindner, she helps Walter to see that he needs to be a role model for his son and show Travis how to stand tall.

10. D. Lindner says that because Mama is “older and wiser and understanding things better,” perhaps she will make a different choice. However, she says that Walter has spoken.

11. A. Mama has dreams to plant this plant in a real garden.

12. when they are at their lowest and can’t believe in themselves

13. The family is proud, and they still plan to move.