Brick by Brick

The following is written in the perspective of Walter Jr. at the end of the play:
     Lots of us have got dreams. I had me a dream. I dreamed 'bout opening a liquor store, me and Willy and Bobo with Mama's check. I was sick of the "Yes sir"s and "No sir"s of my job driving around a rich white man. I couldn't sit around all day no more and just "eat my eggs" when I was "choking to death" on the disgust I had for my life.
     You got to understand that's why I did it - that's why I gave Willy the money. I had to hope for something better. But when Bobo came and said Willy done stolen all that money, I finally figured out that life is divided "between the takers and the 'tooken'". And us Youngers, we're the tooken.
      But when I called back that white man Lindner, I just couldn't bring myself to sell him the house Mama bought. Not when Travis, the sixth generation of our family, was there. Not when my father "earned it for us brick by brick". It took me a while, but I've realized that I am proud of my family.
And that pride's the best gift my father gave me.
     Walter exhibits the most development throughout the play; though he knows they will face adversities, he finally embraces the importance of his family over money. The day he stands up for his family is the day he comes "into his manhood...like a rainbow after the rain". -MC

Together, as a family

I Said, "Eat Your Eggs"

What happens to a dream deferred?
Does it dry up
like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore - 
And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over -
like a syrupy sweet?

Maybe it just sags
like a heavy load.

Or does it explode? 
- Harlem by Langston Hughes (1951)

     I distinctly recall the first time I read this poem; I was in ninth grade when I came across the text whilst idly flipping through my English textbook. The words "fester" and "rotten" are what initially caught my attention and prompted me to read the entire poem. However, it left me dissatisfied with its paradoxical lines. How could a dream crust like a nasty wound but still be sweet? And what was meant by a dream "dry[ing] up like a raisin in the sun"?
     I forgot about them eventually, but these questions were abruptly brought back when we began reading Lorraine Hansberry's A Raisin in the Sun in English class. The title of the play (as I'm sure you've noticed by now) comes from a line in Hughes' poem.
     In Act I scene i, we as readers are already exposed to many dreams that have been deferred; Walter wants to open a liquor shop with his buddies, Walter's mother dreams of purchasing a house with a "little garden in the back" and Beneatha wants to become a doctor in a male-dominated field (45). All of these seem to be pipe dreams, destined to wither up. It's not practical to waste money on a shop or a house, and, according to Walter, Beneatha should just "go be a nurse like other women" or "just get married and be quiet" (38).
     Perhaps the most powerful, heart-wrenching lines, however, come from Walter in response to his wife's skepticism and command to "eat [his] eggs":
     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 world baby! And 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 women say - Your eggs is getting cold!
     As I read these words yesterday I could picture a tired man who craves something better than the life he has lead, but who has little power to change it. It was in this moment my initial questions from years ago were finally answered; a "dream deferred" is the indescribable feeling of being slowly stifled to death with no way out. -MC

The Youngers' dreams are left to shrivel.

A Relationship of Wonder-lust

     I finished reading The Great Gatsby on Thursday evening, and it's left me feeling rather depressed. (Unfortunately, that seems to be a recurring theme in literature these days.) Last week I stated that I'd like to think that Gatsby is a good person, but the ending of the book has got thinking otherwise.
     Yes, Gatsby did nobly take the blame for Daisy's blunder, and yes, he lost his life for it. However, it is his reasoning behind his infatuation with Daisy that really disgusts me.
     This is especially apparent in the passage on page 148:
      It amazed him - he had never been in such a beautiful house before. But what gave it an air of breathless intensity was that Daisy lived there - it was as casual a thing to her as his tent out at camp was to him. There was a ripe mystery about it, a hint of bedrooms upstairs more beautiful and cool than other bedrooms, of gay and radiant activities taking place through its corridors... It excited him, too, that many men had already loved Daisy - it increased her value in his eyes...He took what he could get, ravenously and unscrupulously - eventually he took Daisy one still October night, took her because he had no real right to touch her hand.
     When describing to Nick how the two met, Gatsby claims that Daisy was the first "nice" girl he ever met. That statement itself seems reasonable; Perhaps every girl he'd encountered thus far had been rude or not forthcoming. But he supports this statement by saying that it is the "breathless intensity" of Daisy's HOUSE that impresses him, not Daisy herself. He loves how rich she is, and how everything that happens in the house was "radiant".
     To add on to his shallowness, the fact that other men already love Daisy "increas[es] her value", illustrating his self-centered thinking. Then, knowing full well that he has no right, he deceives and takes advantage of her like a "ravenous" animal with no moral boundaries.
     By no means is Daisy a saint, though. In her own way, she's worse than Gatsby; She feels no remorse for killing Myrtle, nor does she slow down after hitting her. She then allows Gatsby to take the blame for the accident, causing him to be murdered. To top it all off with a bitter cherry, she doesn't bother to come to Gatsby's funeral. So much for loving him.
     I've heard quite a few people say that Gatsby and Daisy's supposedly undying love for each other is the ideal love story. But honestly, if love is based on material goods and selfishness, I don't want any part in it. -MC

The characters of The Great Gatsby in a nutshell.