A Raisin in the Sun: Act III

In the living room BENEATHA sits at the table, still surrounded by the now almost ominous packing crates.

And it is very odd but those who see the changes — who dream, who will not give up — are called idealists...and those who see only the circle — we call them the "realists"!

And I even will have moments when I wonder if the quiet was not better than all that death and hatred. But I will look about my village at the illiteracy and disease and ignorance and I will not wonder long.

...or perhaps I shall live to be a very old man, respected and esteemed in my new nation.

Perhaps the things I believe now for my country will be wrong and outmoded, and I will not understand and do terrible things to have things my way or merely to keep my power.

Don't you see they have always been there...that they always will be. And that such a thing as my own death will be an advance? They who might kill me even...actually replenish all that I was.

Monsieur le petit bourgeois noir himself! There he is—Symbol of a Rising Class!

Entrepreneur! Titan of the system!

And you could get some nice screens to put up in your room round the baby's bassinet.

And maybe — maybe I'll just get down on my black knees... (He does so; RUTH and BENNIE and MAMA watch him in frozen horror) "Captain, Mistuh, Bossman (Groveling and grinning and wringing his hands in profoundly anguished imitation of the slow-witted movie stereotype) A-hee-hee-hee! Oh, yassuh boss!

You done wrote his epitaph too — like the rest of the world?

LINDNER: (To MAMA in her reverie) Then I would like to appeal to you, Mrs. Younger.

MAMA: (In the middle of her getting-ready activity) He did? You ain't old enough to marry nobody (Seeing the moving men lifting one of her chairs precariously) Darling, that ain't no bale of cotton, please handle it so we can sit in it again! I had that chair twenty-five years.