A Raisin in the Sun has more stage directions than a typical play (these are in italics). How do these directions add to your understanding of the play. Give specific examples from the text.

Throughout the play, A Raisin in the Sun, there is more stage directions than a typical play. I believe there is many reason as to why. One of them being, in the stage directions I can tell a lot about the person by their body language and there is things stated in the stage directions that I wouldn't be able to know if they weren't written. This example can be shown in page 51, "MAMA absorbs this speech, studies her daughter and rises slowly and crosses to BENEATHEA and slaps her powerfully across the face. After, there is only silence and the daughter drops her eyes from her mother's face, and MAMA is very tall before her." In these stage directions, I can tell that even though Beneathea is a grown woman, her mother still can correct her mistakes. The fact that Mama is very tall before her, helps us understand that Beneathea still listens to her mother and accepts the way she corrected her. Even though the stage directions in the example were short compared to the others in the book, the screenwriter still got that point across. She needed stage directions to show this because it would be very confusing and the reader wouldn't be able to understand the way the characters are. Finally, the stage directions allow for us, as the readers, to image the characters and understand how they react to certain things. In this play the extra stage directions were very helpful and necessary.

                 

In Act II, Scene 2, Mama puts Walter in charge of all of the money. Why do you think that she does that?

I believe that Mama puts Walter in charge of all the money for a lot of different reasons. One of them being that Walter is the main character that wants to show everyone his manhood. Also, Mama thinks that giving Walter the money will allow Walter to feel in charge at least once. Another thing, she may want to show Walter that she respects him as the man of the house. Mama trusted Walter as well. She raised Walter so she thought that he would do the right thing with the money. Hopefully, even though Walter broke Mama's trust, he could repair his trust with Mama.     

Put yourself into the shoes of the Younger family. What do you think it would be like to live in a tiny, three-room apartment with three generations of your family, without the choice or resources to move elsewhere?

If I were to put myself in the shoes of the Younger family, and I had to live in a tiny, three-room apartment with three generations of my family, I would be very grateful for the meals on my table. I would be grateful because I would know that I my family works very hard for the things I have. I think it would be very difficult to have a small house with many people because I would not have a lot of privacy to do school assignments. I would also have to share my stuff with everyone including cloth, food and etc. I feel as though I it would be very hard to enjoy school or have education due to the reason that I may have to work for money to support my family. Also, I think it would be very frustrating as the family grows or more obstacles come into living. I would feel hopeless because I wouldn't be able to get out of that situation. In short words, I believe this would be very hard.