Act I Scene One

1. Why did Walter ask Ruth what was wrong with her?

2. Why was Ruth upset when Walter gave Travis the money?

3. Who are Willy and Bobo?

4. Walter said, "Damn my eggs . . . damn all the eggs that ever was!" Why?

5. Who is Beneatha?

6. Why was Mama getting a check for $10,000?

7. Why did Beneatha say she wouldn't marry George?

8. What was Beneatha's attitude towards God?

9.What happened to Ruth at the end of Act I Scene One?

Study Questions

1. Why does Ruth scramble Walter’s eggs, even though he says does not want them scrambled? What does this indicate about their relationship and about whether or not they try to listen to one another?

2. Why does Ruth tell Travis to get his mind off the money that is coming the next day? What does this indicate about Travis?

3. Why does Walter give his son more money than he needs for school? How does this leave Walter, in terms of money he himself needs in order to get to work? What does this indicate about Walter’s personality?

Act I Scene Two

1. Who is Joseph Asagai?

2. What did Ruth find out at the doctor's office?

3. Why is Asagai's present to Beneatha appropriate?

4. Why is Asagai's nickname appropriate?

5. What does Mama say is "dangerous"?

6. Where did Ruth actually go instead of the doctor's office?

7.Why did Mama call Walter a disgrace to his father's memory?

1. Which theme that has been raised before is referred to in the reference to roaches “marching…like Napoleon”? Who was Napoleon? What relevance might references to him have for this play?

2. What issue in particular is alluded to when Beneatha says, “All everyone seems to know about when it comes to Africa is ‘Tarzan’”?

3. What recurring theme is alluded to when Beneatha says, while talking about how missionaries save people, “I’m afraid they need more salvation from the British and the French”?

Act II Scene One

1. What was Beneatha's family doing when George came in?

2. What are "assimilationist Negroes"?

3. What did Mama do with her money?

4.What was Walter's reaction to Mama's purchase? Ruth's reaction?

1. What significance for their continued relationship do you think it has that Beneatha prepares to go out to a play with George Murchison in the dress that Joseph Asagai got for her?

2. What do you think has prompted Beneatha to cut her hair short and into an “Afro” hairstyle?

3. Do you think politics is the only reason Beneatha declares she hates assimilationists? If not, what could another factor be?

4.What does it show about Ruth’s awareness of racial tensions that in a casual chat with George Murchison she refers to bombings?

Act II Scene Two

1. How did Ruth find out Walter hadn't been going to work?

2. Where had Walter been going instead of to work?

3.What did Mama do for Walter?

1. What qualities do we see in George Murchison at the beginning of the scene that Beneatha might not like?

2. Why does Beneatha refer to him as a fool, when speaking of him to her mother? In what ways would she consider him foolish?

3. When Mrs. Johnson says, “I’m just soooooo happy for y’all,” do you think she is being honest or hypocritical? What later actions or words of hers either confirm or deny that she is speaking honestly here?

4. Why do Mama and Ruth roll their eyes before offering Mrs. Johnson the coffee? What do you think they are...

Act II Scene Three

1. Who was Karl Lindner, and why did he visit the Youngers' house?

2. What was Walter's reaction to Lindner?

3. What presents did Mama get?

4. What news did Bobo bring to Walter?

Why does Walter say, “Even the N double A C P takes a holiday sometimes…?” What is the NAACP, and what does his referring to it show about his changing attitude?

2. When Beneatha answers him, “Sticks and stones may break my bones…” what are we reminded of?

3. Why do you think Karl Lindner goes to such lengths to talk about everybody getting along before he gets to his reason for talking to them?

4. Who catches on first to what his purpose in talking to them is about? How do you know?

Act III

1. Why didn't Beneatha want to be a doctor anymore?

2. How did Asagai define "idealists" and "realists"?

3. What does Asagai ask Beneatha to do?

4. What fault does Mama find with herself?

5. What solution does Walter have?

6.Why didn't Walter take the money Lindner offered?

7.Did the Youngers stay or move?

1.What do you think accounts for Beneatha’s deep pessimism at the beginning of the act? Do you think it is all because of the lost money?

2. What qualities do we see in Joseph Asagai which enable him to break through Beneatha’s mood to consider her own self-pity?

3. Reading between the lines, so to speak, what does it say about whether or not Beneatha has really given up on medical school, when she refers, even mockingly, to curing “the great sore of Colonialism…with the Penicillin of Independence”?

DISCUSSION

1. Why does the author go to such lengths to describe the furnishings of the Younger family's apartment? What do these furnishings and the state they are in say about the family's lives?

2. What does the absence of light in the Youngers' apartment signify? Why does Ruth so desperately hope for light in the new house?

3. What is Walter trying to say when he refers to African Americans as "the world's most backward race of people" (p. 38)? Does he seriously believe this?

4. What can you deduce about the character of Walter and Beneatha's father, not only from the way his family talks about him but from the character of the family itself? What does his memory signify to each of the family members?

5. What sort of hairstyles were normally worn by African American women in the 1950s? Why does Asagai refer to such styles as "mutilation"? Just how bold is Beneatha's gesture in cutting her hair? What kind of a statement is she making to the outside world?

6. Who has Ruth actually gone to see instead of the doctor? Why does she consider taking this route?

7. What does Beneatha mean by the term "assimilationist"? Can you think of other words or phrases meaning the same thing? Why does she condemn blues music as being assimilationist?

8. Asagai tells Beneatha that "between a man and a woman there need be only one kind of feeling" (63). Can you explain what he means and why, for Beneatha, this feeling alone is not enough?

9. Mama tells Walter that something is eating him up, something that has to do with more than just money. What do you think this is?

10. Mama says to Walter, "You ain't satisfied or proud of nothing we done. I mean that you had a home..., that you don't have to ride to work on the back of nobody's streetcar" (74). Is Walter's life indeed likely to have been better, from a material and political point of view, than his parents' was?

11. What African name has Asagai given Beneatha, and what does it mean? Why is Beneatha satisfied when Asagai translates it for her?

12. In Act II, Scene One, what emotion is Walter expressing when he shouts "Ethiopia stretch forth her hands again!" (77) and "The lion is waking" (78)? Who was Jomo Kenyatta?

13. What does the Youngers' new house signify to Ruth? To Mama? Why does Walter so strongly resist the idea of moving?

14. What does Asagai expect from a woman? What does George expect from a woman? Would either of them be satisfied with Beneatha? Could she be happy with either of them?

15. How does Mrs. Johnson's idea of God differ from Mama's?

16. What does Mrs. Johnson mean when she speaks of the "colored people that was bombed out their place" (100)? Who set off the bomb? Why does she mention this event to the Youngers?

17. Why does Mrs. Johnson say that the Youngers are proud? Does she mean it as a compliment? Are they, in fact, proud? How does pride help, or hinder, them in their progress through life?

18. Why does Mama say that Booker T. Washington is a fool? Do you agree with her?

19. Can you explain what Beneatha means when she says that "there are two things we, as a people, have got to overcome, one is the Ku Klux Klan—and the other is Mrs. Johnson" (104)?

20. What are Walter's fantasies after Mama gives him charge of the money? Why are they so obviously unrealistic, even destructive?

21. Does Walter's failed investment confirm Mama's belief that the Youngers are not businessmen but plain working folks?

22. What does Walter mean when he refers to his sister as a "New Negro" (112)? And why does she call him and Ruth "old-fashioned Negroes"?

23. How does Lindner use language to make his proposal to the Youngers sound almost like a reasonable one? Is it true that "a man, right or wrong, has the right to want to have the neighborhood he lives in a certain kind of way" (117)? Is a "right" actually a right when it infringes on the rights or ignores the humanity of others?

24. Why is Mama's little plant so important to her? What does she mean when she says "It expresses ME" (121)?

25. Why does Beneatha's belief in the importance of doctors and medicine change after Walter loses the family's money?

26. Why is Asagai able to identify himself so intensely with the future of his country, however it may go? Why is Beneatha, at least temporarily, unable to do so?

27. After he has been robbed, Walter says that life is divided "between the takers and the 'tooken'" (141). Do the final events of the play prove him wrong? If so, how?

28. What does it mean, to Walter, to be a "Man"?

In-depth discussion

1. Lorraine Hansberry prefaces her play with a poem by Langston Hughes. How does the play illustrate the theme of the poem? In what way is the concept of the "dream" central to the play? Which characters specifically discuss their dreams? What is Mama's dream in life? Ruth's? Walter's? Do dreams ever become destructive, a substitute for action? Or is it absolutely essential to keep a dream alive?

2. In the first scene, Travis experiences "anger" and "frustration" (29). Is it implied here that such feelings will inevitably be his lot in life, as an African American man? If so, does this implication change over the course of the play?

3. In the fifties, it was extremely ambitious for a young black woman to set out to become a doctor. What does it say about Beneatha that she is determined to pursue this career? What does it say about Mama's character that she is entirely supportive of her daughter's choice? Is it natural that Walter should be resentful? How do Beneatha's two boyfriends, Asagai and George, really feel about her ambitions?

4. George angers the Youngers with his cynical attitude and his mockery of Beneatha's veneration for "our Great West African Heritage." But is George presented as an entirely unsympathetic character? Is it possible to find anything sensible or realistic in his point of view?

5. Except for Asagai, none of the characters in the play has been to Africa. What do Africa and Africanness signify to each character?

6. What does Mama mean when she says "We ain't no business people, Ruth. We just plain working folks" (42)? Do you believe that she is correct, or is her attitude defeatist? Does Ruth, in her heart of hearts, believe her? What would Beneatha's response be to this statement?

7. Beneatha declares that she is searching for her "identity." In what does her search consist? Does she find it, at the end of the play?

8. What does Walter mean when he says money is "life" (74)? Considering what his life has been, is he justified in saying this? Is it simply lack of money that has deprived Walter of so many important things—his sense of manhood, of pride, his love of family? Why, in your opinion, is the Youngers' poverty so much harder on Walter than on the rest of the family?

9. "That is just what is wrong with the colored woman in this world," Walter says to Ruth; "Don't understand about building their men up and making 'em feel like they somebody." Do you feel that Ruth has not been sufficiently supportive to Walter? That she has failed him in some way (84)?

10. For budget reasons, the character of Mrs. Johnson was cut in the original production of the play. Do you feel that the scene is essential to the play? If so, why? If not, why not? What does the scene tell us about the world in which the Youngers live?

11. In his introduction, Robert Nemiroff says that some audience members have perceived Mama as "conservative," an "upholder of the social order." What do you think about this proposition? Doesn't it depend on one's definition of "conservative"? Can you come up with a good definition?

12. Is God a real presence to any of the characters besides Mama? Does Mama's religion give her strength, or is the strength already in her character? Does Beneatha's rejection of her mother's God make her stronger, or more vulnerable?

13. Many of the problems the Youngers must confront are specific to the African American family; others are problems that every family, black or white, must deal with. What in the play do you see as specifically African American, and what is universal?

14. Through most of the play, Walter is shown in a state of arrested development, still very much like a teenager. Do you feel, as Mama comes to, that because for many years she refused to cede the position of head of the family to him, she is to blame for the deficiencies in his character?

15. Though three of them work as servants, Mama and her family believe that "being any kind of a servant wasn't a fit thing for a man to have to be" (103). This belief goes against one that, because of Booker T. Washington's influence, had value in the black community at that time: that all labor was possessed of dignity. Do you side with Mama on this issue, or with Washington? What are your reasons? Is this purely a racial matter, or is it a problem which all races must solve?

16. Asagai sees "what the New World hath finally wrought" in Beneatha—but Beneatha, with a darker vision, sees it in Walter. In what way are they both right? How has American society, with its strengths and weaknesses, shaped both Beneatha and Walter?

17. In answer to someone who thought the play's ending was a happy one, Lorraine Hansberry retorted: "I invite him to come live in one of the communities where the Youngers are going!" (11) But cannot the ending, in some measure, be seen as happy? Or at least as promising hope, or greater strength for the Youngers as a family?