Family Ties (Raisin, Foxes, Journey, Juno)

I set this blog up for summer, but now, well into fall, I find that blogging about my reading helps me think out loud (which I need in order to process information). So, I'll continue to try to tie things together here from reading. Comps are now less than four months away.



I read Lorraine Hansberry's Raisin in the Sun. After Dr. Power suggested parallels between this work and Sean O'Casey's Juno and the Paycock. Reading it through that lens, I have to say there did seem to be some very obvious comparisons. First, surface similarities such as an unwanted pregnancy (Mary and ...). Then, of course social class similarities, and the money motive inspiring and driving everything. On a deeper level, there is the family dynamic in both plays, which seems to be breaking apart. The major difference is that in the American play (Raisin) the family seems to come together finally, in opposition-- dare we say solidarity-- to oppose the exclusionary practices of the all white neighborhood association. In the Irish play (Juno) the family breaks in to splinters, with the death of one, and the mother and daughter leaving at the end to live to raise the coming child with two mothers and no father.



I also read the Little Foxes by Lilian Hellman last week, and that particular play immediately made me think of Eugen O'Neil's Long Day's Journey into Night. Both plays are realistic depictions of American families, and these families are dysfunctional. In fact you could describe both plays as a painful protracted glance at dysfunction-- dysfunction on display. An interesting contrast to the Irish plays, which do not allow this intimate glance into family life (at least in O'Casey's case), and though you are in the home of the family, you are not in the head of the characters so deeply. Both O'Neil and Hellman seem to write from within the family secret they have been party to.



One of the most helpful, and fun, things I've been doing in conjunction with my reading and meeting with Dr. Power has been finding films version of the plays and novels I've been reading. There is an old version of Juno directed by Alfred Hitchcock, a film version of Raisin in the Sun with Sidney Poitier, a film of Long Day's Journey with Katherine Hepburn and Jason Robards, and a Bette Davis version of Raisin in the Sun. All of these are worth watching and the O'Neil, the Hansberry, and the Hellman stay very close to their original sources.
The Little Foxes