Symbols are objects, characters, figures, and colors
used to represent abstract ideas or concepts.
“Eat Your Eggs”
This phrase appears early in the play, as an instruction
from Ruth to Walter to quiet him. Walter then employs the phrase
to illustrate how women keep men from achieving their goals—every
time a man gets excited about something, he claims, a woman tries
to temper his enthusiasm by telling him to eat his eggs. Being quiet
and eating one’s eggs represents an acceptance of the adversity
that Walter and the rest of the Youngers face in life. Walter believes
that Ruth, who is making his eggs, keeps him from achieving his
dream, and he argues that she should be more supportive of him.
The eggs she makes every day symbolize her mechanical approach to
supporting him. She provides him with nourishment, but always in
the same, predictable way.
Mama’s Plant
The most overt symbol in the play, Mama’s plant
represents both Mama’s care and her dream for her family. In her
first appearance onstage, she moves directly toward the plant to
take care of it. She confesses that the plant never gets enough
light or water, but she takes pride in how it nevertheless flourishes
under her care. Her care for her plant is similar to her care for
her children, unconditional and unending despite a less-than-perfect
environment for growth. The plant also symbolizes her dream to own
a house and, more specifically, to have a garden and a yard. With her
plant, she practices her gardening skills. Her success with the plant
helps her believe that she would be successful as a gardener. Her
persistence and dedication to the plant fosters her hope that her
dream may come true.
Beneatha’s Hair
When the play begins, Beneatha has straightened hair.
Midway through the play, after Asagai visits her and questions her
hairstyle, she cuts her Caucasian-seeming hair. Her new, radical
afro represents her embracing of her heritage. Beneatha’s cutting
of her hair is a very powerful social statement, as she symbolically
declares that natural is beautiful, prefiguring the 1960s
cultural credo that black is beautiful. Rather than force her hair
to conform to the style society dictates, Beneatha opts for a style
that enables her to more easily reconcile her identity and her culture.
Beneatha’s new hair is a symbol of her anti-assimilationist beliefs
as well as her desire to shape her identity by looking back to her
roots in Africa.
