Hating Walter Lee Younger

I despise, nay, loathe Walter Lee Younger for his sexist, hypocritical, and most unforgivably, selfish manner. Although he seems to have developed some sense of manhood as he decides not to sell his pride, he still foolishly, ignorantly tells his sister, "to marry a man with some loot," shortly thereafter. Walter places his own dreams, or better, his own delusions before those of his family, be it his wife's, who he repeatedly insults and debases with his careless, bitter words, or his mother's, or sister's.  "Brother"  amidst his wallowing misery at his failure at being a "man", discounts his suffering on those who love him, and has the audacity to ask Ruth, "Who cares about you?". Repeatedly,  Walter declares he is too good to be a chauffeur, that he is better than those around him, that, "it's hard to find a man on... the Southside who understands [his] kind of thinking. Despite this, despite his belief that serving others is an unworthy form of employment, in his fantasy, " a gardener  will be clipping away at the hedges". He can't be a servant, he's too noble, but others certainly can. If this isn't the greatest hypocrisy, then, "yuk, yuk, yuk." As if this isn't enough, Walter believes just for being a man, he inherently holds the divine right to be the "head of the family," never mind his irresponsibility. Yet, when his mother trusts him with safekeeping the money, he doesn't do as he promised and utilizes the money his mother deemed for his sister to fulfill her dream of becoming a doctor for his own purposes to get his dear, little liquor store. However, when his mother buys the home of her dreams, he rancorously asserts that she "butchered up a dream of [his]". He harangues his mother for squashing his hopes, then proceeds to annihilate  his sister's hopes.  Not only this, but he keeps pressuring his sister to marry, all because, after all, she is a woman, and a woman shouldn't ever aspire to anything besides marriage. He diminishes her dream of doctoring as worthless, telling her to forget it, it'll never happen, yet when he doesn't get what he wants, he acts like a spoiled three-year old brat. Suddenly when he can't have what he desires, even if the rest of his family can, "everything is sad," and he simply drops his work. The list of all that Walter does which I abhor is virtually endless, yet one irony I find especially appropriate is that the more Walter attempts to be a man, the less of a man he is.

 

My Reaction To Walter