A RAISIN IN THE SUN – 20-year old Beneatha is currently going to college and some of her personal beliefs and views have distanced her from conservative family. She dreams of being a doctor and struggles to determine her identity as a well-educated black woman. 1-2 min.
BENEATHA: Me?…Me?…Me, I’m nothing…Me. When I was very small…we used to take our sleds out in the wintertime and the only hills we had were the ice-covered stone steps of some houses down the street. And we used to fill them in with snow and make them smooth and slide down them all day…and it was very dangerous you know…far too steep…and sure enough one day a kid named Rufus came down too fast and hit the sidewalk… and we saw his face just split open right there in front of us… And I remember standing there looking at his bloody open face thinking that was the end of Rufus. But the ambulance came and they took him to the hospital they fixed the broken bones and they sewed it all up…and the next time I saw Rufus he just had a little line down the middle of his face…I never got over that…
That that was what one person could do for another, fix him up—sew up the problem, make him all right again. That was the most marvelous thing in the world…I wanted to do that. I always thought it was the one concrete thing in the world that a human being could do. Fix up the sick, you know—and make them whole again. This was truly being God.
No—I wanted to cure. It used to be so important to me. I wanted to cure. It used to matter. I used to care. I mean about people and how their bodies hurt…
I think I stopped.
