Courtland Clark

SPOILERS AHEAD This was terrible. Most of the huge reveals in the book were completely forgotten about by the end. For example, Beneatha’s boyfriend was in the play for half of the shortest scene, and was set up like he was going to matter, but he was never mentioned again. Walter losing the money was significant for all of 3 pages, and Ruth being pregnant was never mentioned again. Travis had barely any lines or role in the story, and Beneatha was vastly underutilized by the author, as she has an interesting character. The worst offender of this was Asagai. He was a character who gave a very important speech in relation to the story, and he was never talked about throughout the rest of the play. I have never before seen a book that has such a low plot point permanence. It feels more like a collection of short stories based around the same set of characters. The amount of things that happen are disproportionate to the amount of repercussions for those actions. In short, the story tries so hard to be sad and devastating to the point that the things that happen seemingly have no repercussions or affects.