'Fix Up the Sick' from Raisin in the Sun

Character name: Beneatha Younger

Gender: Female

Age Range: 18 — 24

Show: Raisin in the Sun

Duration: 0 — 1 minutes

Monologue Type: dramatic

Notes: None

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 and 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...

[(WALTER sits up, listening on the bed.  Throughout this scene it is important that we feel his reaction at all times, that he visibly responds to the words of his sister and ASAGAI.)}

[ASAGAI:  What?]

BENEATHA:  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 human being could do.  Fix up the sick, you know--and make them whole again.  This was truly being God...