Artistic Expressions
Poetry Analysis
Poetry was the response to challenges presented to African Americans. Poetry became the voice, the outcry to the political, social and economic burdens that continued to defer dreams. Poetry is an ideal tool to teach student how to identify the implied meaning of figurative language. We must help students feel the emotional tone of verse which helps them understand the thematic connections. The terrible plight of inner city blacks has been directly expressed by an entire range of poets, and it has been dramatized by playwrights like Lorraine Hansberry.
In class we will stop at certain points while studying "Raisin in the Sun" to highlight poetry that expresses the situation more powerfully. Here is an example:
Act 1: Scene 1
Travis: "This is the morning we're suppose to bring fifty cents to school; our teacher says we have to bring it."
Ruth: "Well I don't care what your teacher says; I ain't got no fifty cents this morning."
Travis gets quite irritated with his mother's response while Ruth is frustrated with her son because of her inability to provide for her son. This poem by Langston Hughes may capture Ruth's frustration.
Well, son, I'll tell you:
Life for me ain't been no crystal stair
It's had tacks in it
And splinters
And boards torn up,
And places with no carpet on the floor
Bare,
"Mother to Son" (excerpt) Langston Hughes
Act 1: Scene 2
The check finally shows up and Mama says: "I don't know what we all around here so excited about. We known it was coming for months. Now be quiet it's just a check. Don't act silly, we ain't never been no people to act silly 'bout no money."
Ruth: "We ain't never had none before."
Mama opens the check and asks Travis to help her read the amount of zeroes for clarification. Travis counts the zeroes and exclaims "Gaa lee Grandmama you're rich." Mama's mood changes and she sadly questions "Ten-thousand dollars that's all they give you." Travis turns to his mother Ruth and asks, "don't grandma want to be rich?"
A strong poem by Amiri Baraka (Leroi Jones) expresses the mood or tone in the Younger household. In "A New Reality Is Better Than a New Movie!" Baraka writes:
How will it reach you, getting up, sitting on the side of the bed, getting ready to go to work. Hypnotized by the machine, and the cement floor, the jungle treachery of
Trying
To survive with no money in a money world, of making the boss
100,000 for every 200
dollars
you get, and then having his brother get you for the rent. . .
Baraka concludes about the falsity of Hollywood movies:
They can't even show you thinking or demanding the new socialist reality, it's the ultimate
Tidal wave
When all over the planet, men and women, with heat in their hands, demand that
Society
Be planned to include the lives and self determination of all the people ever to live.
Analyzing the figurative language in small groups will assist students eventually in creating original poems. Ruth: "Well, Lord knows, we've put enough rent into this here rat trap to pay for four houses by now." Listen to Ruth and her use of the word
"RAT TRAP," or hear mama in a sudden reflective mood: "I remember just as well the day me and big Walter moved in here though. Hadn't been married but two weeks and wasn't planning on living here more than a year. We was going to set away, little by little don't you know, and buy a little place out there in Morgan Park. Even picked out the house, looks right dumpy today after all these years. Well our dreams just never came true."
"Kitchenette Building" by Gwnedolyn Brooks describes the design of the Chicago Housing Developments/Projects. The kitchen combined with the living room and bedroom was considered a rat trap or closet apartment. The bathroom was shared with other tenants on the same floor. Mama speaks to Ruth about how she and Big Walter were controlled by the hours of the day. Working day in and day out with every hand ticking to reach what they thought would be their plans. Involuntary demands steered them away from their dreams. Turning gray as quickly as each hand turns around the clock, you can never catch up to the minute hand because you have to stop and pay the rent.
The apartments were so cramped you could smell your neighbor's trash. By the time you got into the bathroom, you prayed the hot water did not run out. Can you imagine a cold shower after working an eighteen hour shift?
Kitchenette Building
We are things of dry hours and the involuntary plan,
Grayed in and gray. "Dream" mate a giddy sound, not strong
"Like rent", "feeding a wife", "satisfying a man".
But could a dream sent up through onion fumes
Its white and violet, fight with fried potatoes
And yesterday's garbage ripening in the hall,
Flutter, or sing an aria down these rooms,
Even if we were willing to let it in,
Had time to warm it, keep it very clean,
Anticipate a message, let it begin?
We wonder. But not well! Not for a minute!
Since Number five is out of the bathroom now.
We think of lukewarm water, hope to get in it.
Gwendolyn Brooks.
Play/Film Analysis
Realism is the depiction of subjects on stage as they appear in everyday life. Films have plots that follow what is known as "classic narrative realism."8 A situation is presented, then disrupted and is changed or resolved by the end of the film. Examples can be found in science fiction, horror, romance or adventure, set in the past or present, but the structure of the story seems to remain the same. The truth of what we see intersects the unfolding of the story.
The camera helps confirm this idea of what we see as real or true. Social Realism9 is used to describe visual and other realistic works that chronicle the everyday conditions of the working classes and the poor. This style is critical of the social environment that causes these conditions. In viewing the film Raisin in the Sun students will look for examples of realism and as a class we will confirm this idea of realism through discussion and analysis. The playwright Lorraine Hansberry explains to an interviewer why her play is considered genuine realism.10
Interview with Lorraine Hansberry
Interview: Would you call your play naturalistic?
Lorraine: I would not
Interviewer: And what would you call it? If you had to put into words.
Lorraine: I hope that my work is genuine realism.
Interviewer: What is the difference?
Lorraine: It's enormously different. Well, naturalism tends to take the world and say: this is what it is, this is how it happened, and it is true because we see it everyday in life that way. You know you simply photograph the garbage can. But in realism, I think the artist who is creating the realistic work imposes on it not only what is, but what is possible.....Because that is part of reality too. So that you get a much larger potential of what man can do. And it requires a much greater selectivity you don't just put everything that seems you put what you believe is.........(Interview in Raisin in the Sun, Thirtieth Anniversary Edition;Samuel French Inc. 1987)
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