Comparison Of Family In Brighton Beach Memoirs And A Raisin In The Sun

Family struggles have been present since before time. Every family has there own challenges that they are forced to face. Two plays show how a family can deal and compensate with their daily battles. A Raisin In The Sun by Lorraine Hansberry is a play set in Chicago, before the civil rights movement, about the Youngers. The Youngers lived in a crammed apartment, with just enough space for the five of them, and are expecting another child. They are depending on their father’s life insurance check to get them out of poverty and into better living conditions. Once that money is lost, they have no way of getting it back. Similar to the second play, Brighton Beach Memoirs by Neil Simon set in Brooklyn, NY, in the 1930’s, about a family struggling to make ends meet. Times are tough when the Jerome-Morton family is dependent on their father Jack’s and their son Stanley’s salaries. Within the two plays, both families struggle to deal with poverty in their everyday lives with budgeting their money and keeping a steady salary, and making sure that they are able to keep a job to support themselves and their loved ones.
Throughout the Youngers and the Jerome-Morton family, they all had to sparingly spend their money where it was most needed. When Travis Younger had asked his mother, Ruth, for money to bring to school to donate, she had stated
that “Well, I ain’t got no fifty cents this morning” (Hansberry 28). Travis continued to say that his teacher said that he was required to bring in the money, and his mother fought back with, “I don’t care what teacher say. I ain’t got it” (Hansberry 28). Ruth was trying to save their money and not give it away when her family needed it most. The Jerome-Morton family was also sparsely spending their money. Their youngest son, Eugene, has shoes that “have no soles. They’re hanging by a tiny pierce of rubber. [He] has to clench his toes when [he] runs out for a fly ball” (Simon 37). This also shows how the Jerome-Morton family knew that there were necessities that needed to be replaced, but somewhat ignored them because they couldn’t afford to pay for it. The Youngers and the Jerome-Mortons prioritized their money and spent it where it was needed most, even if that meant that other needs were pushed to the side.
In order to keep a roof over their family’s heads, the Youngers and the Jerome-Mortons each had their own “breadwinners” that they depended on to support them. The salaries that they were bringing in, the families heavily trusted to maintain their living standards. Which is why it was so devastating when the money was gone. Although Walter Lee, in A Raisin in the Sun, was trying to do the right thing by investing the rest of his mother’s money in a liquor store, it ultimately backfired. Walter was investing his father’s life insurance money with two other men, Bobo and Willy. Bobo had stopped by Walter’s apartment to break the news to him, “Willy is gone” (Hansberry 128). This meant that Willy had taken all of the money his mother had trusted him to deal with, and ran off. Thus, Walter and his family were left with very little money. In Brighton Beach Memoirs, Stanley likewise lost money that his family had depended on. Every couple of weeks Stanley was paid his salary of $17. But this week, he decided to test his luck a little more then usual in his poker games at work, and unfortunately it didn’t end well for him, “they cleaned [him] out in twenty minutes” (Simon 82). Stanley lost the money that his family desperately needed to pay their bills and put food on the table. Within both story lines, both Walter Lee and Stanley tried their hardest and had the best efforts in mind for their families, but it all turned out to be a gamble, and they lost.
Due to having to work so hard and losing so much, both Walter Lee Younger and Jack Jerome changed the way that they lived to adjust to the tragedies that were present in their lives. After Walter’s mother had told him that she was not going to give him his father’s life insurance money to invest in a liquor store, he began to be finding himself in a bar, the Green Hat, almost every night. He would leave the house, skip work, and get drunk. It was his way of coping with losing his dream and his final chance of trying of getting his family out of low economical status. It had gotten so bad to the point where he had almost lost his job. Walter was finally able to get out of his depressed thoughts when his mother, Mama, finally decided to trust him with the rest of his father’s life insurance money. Although Jack did lose his one of his jobs, due to his boss becoming bankrupt. Therefore, “he was trying to make extra money driving a cab at nights and he just plain wore out. He passed out on the subway and a policeman had to bring him home” (Simon 77). Jack Jerome had a heart attack while trying to support seven people that lived under his roof. He worked himself so hard, he was starting to become sick. Consequently, both men worked their very hardest to support their families and got sick on the way, whether it was physically or mentally. Both families in A Raisin In The Sun, and in Brighton Beach Memoirs, struggled with a stable income and funding themselves to have a proper way of life.
Throughout each play, economical challenges are present in their everyday lives. Whether it is bringing 50 cents for school, or just replacing old sneakers. Paying to stay in a very crammed apartment was even shown to be tough. It was also presented difficult to keep a stable job with a steady income to pay for their bills. All of these causes are what pushes families to their lowest points, poverty. Poverty can challenge those to their breaking points and drive them to test their
luck.