by Robert McKee
15
ASYMMETRIC CONFLICT
A RAISIN IN THE SUN
Lorraine Hansberry’s play opened in New York on March 11, 1959, starring Sidney Poitier, Claudia McNeil, Ruby Dee, and Louis Gossett Jr. It was the first play written by a black woman to reach Broadway and won the New York Drama Critics’ Circle Award. Two years later Hansberry adapted it to the screen.
The play tells the story of a black family living in a tiny apartment on Chicago’s South Side in the 1950s. The Youngers recently buried the family patriarch, Walter, who literally worked himself to death. Walter left his wife, Lena, ten thousand dollars in life insurance. Lena wants to use a third of the money for a down payment on a house; a third to help her daughter, Bennie, through medical school; and the rest for her son, Walter Lee.
Walter Lee and two of his buddies have a plan to open a liquor store, but they need cash. Walter’s scene intention drives the scene below: to persuade his wife, Ruth, to help him get the whole ten thousand dollars. Ruth doesn’t trust her husband’s business venture and knows Lena will never give him all her money for any purpose, let alone a liquor store. Her scene intention contradicts his: to evade Walter’s scheme.
As husband and wife block each other’s conscious desires (force of antagonism), the scene shapes an asymmetrical conflict. Walter compels the action and the turning points happen to him. Ruth does her best to avoid conflict.
That’s the surface conflict, but taking the scene deeper, what do these characters really want? Walter Lee is a chauffeur, a dead-end job if there ever was one. The liquor store, he feels, will give him money and with that will come pride, independence, and the admiration of his wife and their son, Travis. Walter Lee wants: to gain self-respect (super-intention).
What Walter Lee does not know, however, is that his wife is two months pregnant with a second child. Because they live in poverty, she secretly contemplates an abortion. Like her husband, she also works for rich white people, as a domestic. She dreams of a decent life with a regular income in a home of their own. Ruth desperately needs: to find security (super-intention).
Once again, the scene is printed in bold, interspaced with my notes on its beats and writing techniques. First read the bold passages straight through as Hansberry wrote the scene. Listen to the language in your mind, or better yet, read it aloud to yourself. Note the vocabulary with its short, punchy words; note the stripped-down grammar, and in particular, note the cadence of Hansberry’s language and how the rhythm of her phrasings matches the rhythms of her characters’ emotions. Once you have a feeling for how the scene plays, reread it against my analysis.
A RAISIN IN THE SUN
Act 1, Scene 1
The Younger apartment kitchen. As Ruth makes breakfast, her husband, Walter Lee, enters.
It’s useful, I believe, to think of scenes as mini-dramas, often triggered by a mini–inciting incident of their own. In this case, Walter throws the morning out of balance by bringing up his liquor store plans. He knows Ruth scorns the idea, so as she makes breakfast in a sour mood, he opens the scene with a smile.
WALTER: You know what I was thinking ‘bout in the bathroom this morning?
RUTH: (She looks at him in disgust and turns back to her work) No.
BEAT 1
ACTION: Walter inviting her to talk.
REACTION: Ruth snubbing his offer.
Notice that as the scene below builds, Hansberry never repeats a beat.
WALTER: How come you always try to be so pleasant!
RUTH: What is there to be pleasant ‘bout!
BEAT 2
ACTION: Walter calling her a killjoy.
REACTION: Ruth calling their life a misery.
WALTER: You want to know what I was thinking ‘bout in the bathroom or not?
RUTH: I know what you thinking ‘bout.
BEAT 3
ACTION: Walter insisting she listen.
REACTION: Ruth dismissing his idea.
In the first three beats, Hansberry quickly establishes that after years of struggle to make ends meet, they’re experts in hurting each other.
WALTER: (Ignoring her) ‘Bout what me and Willy Harris was talking about last night.
RUTH: (Immediately—a refrain) Willy Harris is a good-for-nothing loudmouth.
BEAT 4
ACTION: Walter ignoring her.
REACTION: Ruth ridiculing him.
WALTER: Anybody who talks to me has to be a good-for-nothing loudmouth, ain’t he? And what you know about who is just a good-for-nothing loudmouth? Charlie Atkins was just a “good-for-nothing loudmouth” too, wasn’t he! When he wanted me to go in the dry-cleaning business with him. And now—he’s grossing a hundred thousand dollars a year. A hundred thousand dollars a year! You still call him a loudmouth!
RUTH: (Bitterly) Oh, Walter Lee… (She sits at the table and drops her head on her folded arms)
BEAT 5
ACTION: Walter blaming her.
REACTION: Ruth hiding her guilt.
Note Hansberry’s skill: This is a superb example of how to set up a future payoff. At this point neither the audience nor any other character knows that Ruth is pregnant and contemplating an abortion. As the scene plays, the audience’s first impression may be that there’s some truth in Walter’s complaint, that Ruth’s pessimism is a drag on his life. But that’s Hansberry’s deft setup for a forthcoming payoff. When Ruth’s pregnancy is revealed, we’ll suddenly grasp the real reason she’s in a tetchy, sullen mood. We’ll see her character, this scene, and its subtext with a rush of deep, unexpected but retrospectively logical perception.
Therefore, the actor playing Ruth must create the pain and dread of her secret without giving it away and spoiling the audience’s discovery when the Act 1 climax pays off this scene’s setup.
For example, Hansberry calls for Ruth to drop her head on her arms at the table. It looks like frustration over Walter’s badgering, but it could actually be that she’s suppressing morning sickness. The actor might play this secretly to herself, but she wouldn’t, for instance, clutch her stomach and tip off the audience.
WALTER: (Rising and standing over her) You tired, ain’t you? Tired of everything. Me, the boy, the way we live—this beat-up hole, everything. Ain’t you? (She doesn’t look up, doesn’t answer) So tired—moaning and groaning all the time, but you wouldn’t do nothing to help, would you? You couldn’t be on my side that long for nothing, could you?
RUTH: Walter, please leave me alone.
WALTER: A man needs for a woman to back him up…
RUTH: Walter…
BEAT 6
ACTION: Walter calling her selfish.
REACTION: Ruth giving in.
Ruth submits to listen, or at least pretends to listen. It’s easier than battling the relentless Walter. He sees it as a sign he’s getting somewhere, so he changes his manner to sweet talk.
WALTER: Mama would listen to you. You know she listen to you more than she do me and Bennie. She think more of you. All you have to do is just sit down with her when you drinking your coffee one morning and talking ’bout things like you do and—(He sits down beside her and demonstrates graphically what he thinks her methods and tone should be)—you just sip your coffee, see, and say easy like that you been thinking ‘bout that deal Walter Lee is so interested in, ‘bout the store and all, and sip some more coffee, like what you saying ain’t really that important to you—and the next thing you know, she be listening good and asking you questions and when I come home—I can tell her the details. This ain’t no fly-by-night proposition, baby. I mean we figured it out, me and Willy and Bobo.
RUTH: (With a frown) Bobo?
BEAT 7
ACTION: Walter seducing her.
REACTION: Ruth smelling a rat.
It doesn’t occur to Walter that the coffee klatch scene he acts out ridicules women. In fact, the audience wouldn’t have noticed and might even have found it amusing because in 1959, offhanded sexism was commonplace and virtually invi
sible. But not to Hansberry. This is another of her excellent setups. She’s planting Walter’s sexism here so she can harvest it at the end of the scene when he attacks all black women for their alleged betrayal of black men.
WALTER: Yeah. You see, this little liquor store we got in mind cost seventy-five thousand and we figured the initial investment on the place be ‘bout thirty thousand, see. That be ten thousand each. Course, there’s a couple of hundred you got to pay so’s you don’t spend you life just waiting for them clowns to let your license get approved—
RUTH: You mean graft?
BEAT 8
ACTION: Walter playing the businessman.
REACTION: Ruth foreseeing disaster.
WALTER: (Frowning impatiently) Don’t call it that. See there, that just goes to show you what women understand about the world. Baby, don’t nothing happen for you in this world ‘less you pay somebody off!
RUTH: Walter, leave me alone!
BEAT 9
ACTION: Walter proving his worldliness.
REACTION: Ruth rejecting his folly.
Ruth is a deeply moral woman. The thought of an abortion, which was a felony in the 1950s, eats at her. She must be desperate to talk about it, but note how Hansberry wisely keeps it in the subtext.
RUTH: (She raises her head, stares at him vigorously, then says quietly) Eat your eggs, they gonna be cold.
WALTER: (Straightening up from her and looking off) That’s it. There you are. Man say to his woman: I got me a dream. His woman say: Eat your eggs. (Sadly, but gaining in power) Man say: I got to take hold of this here world, baby! And a woman say: Eat your eggs and go to work. (Passionately now) Man say: I got to change my life, I’m choking to death, baby. And his woman say—(In utter anguish as he brings his fists down on his thighs)—your eggs is getting cold!
BEAT 10
ACTION: Ruth placating him.
REACTION: Walter accusing her of disloyalty.
RUTH: (Softly) Walter, that ain’t none of our money.
Walter falls silent and turns away from her.
BEAT 11
ACTION: Ruth swinging a moral hammer.
REACTION: Walter coping with defeat.
FIRST TURNING POINT: This scene plays in not one but two movements. The first movement begins at the positive as Walter has hope that he can convince Ruth to help him get his mother’s money. He runs a guilt-tripping argument, claiming that because Ruth ruined his prior chance at business success, she owes him her help now. What’s more, as his wife, she is morally obligated to support her husband’s venture. Of course he undermines his “moral” position with his willingness to pay bribes. Ruth finally explodes his argument by pointing out that they have no right to the money. His dead father earned that money with decades of sweat and pain. It’s Lena’s money, not theirs. It would be immoral to seduce her out of it. Beat 11 creates a negative turning point that shatters Walter’s scene intention. He knows he cannot argue against that truth, so he goes silent for a moment to gather himself for an attack in a new direction with a new scene intention: to escape his overwhelming sense of failure.
WALTER: (Not listening at all or even looking at her) This morning, I was lookin’ in the mirror and thinking about it. I’m thirty-five years old; I been married eleven years and I got a boy who sleeps in the living room—(very, very quietly)—and all I got to give him is stories about how rich white people live…
RUTH: Eat your eggs, Walter.
WALTER: Damn my eggs… damn all the eggs that ever was!
RUTH: Then go to work.
BEAT 12
ACTION: Walter begging for sympathy.
REACTION: Ruth ignoring his plea.
WALTER: (Looking up at her) See—I’m trying to talk to you ’bout myself—(shaking his head with the repetition)—and all you can say is eat them eggs and go to work.
RUTH: (Wearily) Honey, you never say nothing new. I listen to you every day, every night and every morning, and you never say nothing new. (Shrugging) So you would rather be Mr. Arnold than be his chauffeur. So—I would rather be living in Buckingham Palace.
BEAT 13
ACTION: Walter accusing her of not loving him.
REACTION: Ruth accusing him of living in a fantasy.
WALTER: That is just what is wrong with the colored woman in this world… don’t understand about building their men up and making ’em feel like they somebody. Like they can do something.
RUTH: (dryly, but to hurt) There are colored men who do things.
BEAT 14
ACTION: Walter blaming her for his failure.
REACTION: Ruth blaming him for his failure.
SECOND TURNING POINT: After his self-pity and guilt trips fall on deaf ears, Walter tries this logic: All black women make all black men failures. Ruth is black. Therefore, she’s to blame for his failure. But again she destroys his argument, this time with a fact and its implication: Some black men succeed. He is responsible for his failed life. She’s right and he knows it. Her bitter truth turns the scene to a double negative.
WALTER: No thanks to the colored woman.
RUTH: Well, being a colored woman, I guess I can’t help myself none.
BEAT 15
ACTION: Walter clinging to his lame excuse.
REACTION: Ruth sneering at his self-deception.
WALTER: (Mumbling) We one group of men tied to a race of women with small minds.
Ruth looks away in silence.
BEAT 16
ACTION: Walter soothing his wounded ego.
REACTION: Ruth retreating into her fears.
Let’s look at Hansberry’s sequence of beats and how she designed their progression. She starts with a mini–inciting incident: Walter’s cheerful invitation to talk, followed by Ruth’s hostile, one-word answer, “No.” From Beat 1 to Beat 6, Hansberry builds the beats to the negative. Each exchange tops the previous beat as Ruth and Walter add pain on pain, humiliation on humiliation, putting their love and hope in greater and greater jeopardy.
BEAT 1: Inviting her to talk/Refusing his invitation.
BEAT 2: Calling her a killjoy/Calling their life a misery.
BEAT 3: Insisting she listen/Dismissing his idea.
BEAT 4: Ignoring her/Ridiculing his idea.
BEAT 5: Blaming her/Hiding her guilt.
BEAT 6: Calling her selfish/Giving in.
Ruth surrenders for a moment to listen to what he has to say.
As Walter acts out the “coffee klatch” in Beat 7, the scene takes on a lighter, almost amusing tone. The mood rises toward the positive, and we begin to feel that Ruth might take his side. But when he mentions Bobo, she reacts with suspicion, and the scene swings back toward a deeper negative, building to the turning point at Beat 11.
BEAT 7: Seducing her/Smelling a rat.
BEAT 8: Playing the businessman/Foreseeing disaster.
BEAT 9: Proving his worldliness/Rejecting his folly.
BEAT 10: Placating him/Accusing her of disloyalty.
BEAT 11: Swinging a moral hammer/Coping with defeat.
Beat 11 climaxes Walter’s scene intention. He realizes that Ruth will never help him get his mother’s money. Walter has failed again. This blow silences him for a moment, and the scene takes a breath while Walter gathers his anger and unleashes the scene’s second movement.
First he must somehow bandage his wounded ego. So in Beat 12 he tries pleading for Ruth’s understanding, but then in Beats 13 and 14 he turns on her to blame her and all black women for his failure. Finally she nails him with the truth.
BEAT 12: Begging for sympathy/Ignoring his plea.
BEAT 13: Accusing her of not loving him/Accusing him of living in a fantasy.
BEAT 14: Blaming her for his failure/Blaming him for his failure.
Beat 14 climaxes both the second movement and the scene as Ruth forces Walter to confront his responsibility for his own miserable life.
BEAT 15: Clinging to his lame excuse/Sneering at his self-deception.
B
EAT 16: Soothing his wounded ego/Retreating into her fears.
The last two beats are a resolution movement that eases the tension as Walter retreats into self-pity and Ruth retreats into her secret fears about her pregnancy.
A sampling of the gerunds used to name the actions and reactions of husband and wife lays out the scene’s asymmetrical conflict:
Walter’s actions: inviting, insisting, blaming, seducing, proving, accusing, versus Ruth’s reactions: dismissing, hiding, giving in, placating, ignoring, retreating.
A sampling of lines reveals the word choices and modals used to carry out those actions.
Walter’s aggressive accusations:
You still call him a loudmouth?
You wouldn’t do nothing to help, would you?
A man needs a woman to back him up.
I’m choking to death, baby!
Ruth’s passive reactions:
Oh, Walter Lee…
Please leave me alone.
That ain’t none of our money.
I guess I can’t help myself none.