LITERARY ANALYSIS OF A PASSAGE: SETTING
LITERARY ANALYSIS OF A PASSAGE
ACT 1, SCENE i The YOUNGER living room would be a comfortable and well-ordered room if it were not for a number of inde- structible contradictions to this state of being. Its furnish- ings are typical and undistinguished and their primary feature now is that they have clearly had to accommodate the living of too many people for too many years and they are tired. Still, we can see that at some time, a time probably no longer remembered by the family {except perhaps for MAMA), the furnishings of this room were actually selected with care and love and even hope and brought to this apartment and arranged with taste and pride. That was a long time ago. Now the once loved pattern of the couch upholstery has to fight to show itself from under acres of crocheted doilies and couch covers which have themselves finally come to be more important than the upholstery. And here a table or a chair has been moved to disguise the worn places in the carpet; but the carpet has fought back by showing its weariness, with depressing uniformity, elsewhere on its surface. Weariness has, in fact, won in this room. Everything has been polished, washed, sat on, used, scrubbed too often. All pretenses but living itself have long since van- ished from the very atmosphere of this room. Moreover, a section of this room, for it is not really a room unto itself, though the landlord's lease would make it seem so, slopes backward to provide a small kitchen area, where the family prepares the meals that are eaten in the living room proper, which must also serve as dining room. The single window that has been provided for these "two" rooms is located in this kitchen area. The sole natural light the family may enjoy in the course of a day is only that which fights its way through this little window. At left, a door leads to a bedroom which is shared by MAMA and her daughter, BENEATHA. At right, opposite, is a second room (which in the beginning of the life of this apartment was probably a breakfast room) which serves as a bedroom for WALTER and his wife, RUTH. |
Which literary elements, techniques and moves are evidenced in this passage?
What dominant impressions are created? How is the living room characterized at the level of language? How does this characterization reflect on theme of the play? How does this opening introduction to the play's setting relate to the poem, A Dream Deferred, by Langston Hughes? |
- Home
- Introduction to RAISIN
- Download PDF of RAISIN
- Read RAISIN online
- Harlem - A Dream Deferred (Hughes)
- SETTING: Opening Scene
- READING QUESTIONS
- READING QUIZZES
- Visual Resources
- Film version (2008)
- Vocabulary
- Essay Prompt on Betrayal (required)
- Essay Prompt on Surroundings (extra credit)
- EAP: American Dream