While this play has a very diverse cast of characters from an innocent ten year old to a wise old woman, my favorite character in this book is Ruth Younger and my least favorite character is Walter Lee Younger. I love Ruth for being compromising, understanding, supportive and always trying to bring the family together and keeping everyone happy. However, Walter on the other hand is the exact opposite, he is naive, stupid and lacks understanding as he creates the most problems in the family and is very disrespectful.
Ruth plays the role of a woman who moulds herself to satisfy others; she does not necessarily express herself, but is always alert about any danger that may strike the family. In Act Two, Scene Three, she was always excited after hearing about the possibility of their new house and began investing in decorations for it and for others. Here, one can see a typical housewife of the 50s in Ruth who is constantly passionate to invest in any form of betterment for her family. Even though in Act Two Scene Two, Walter very harshly conveys to Ruth that he does not care about his wife at all, Ruth almost suppresses that feeling inside of her and just respects her husband and loves him at all times. Ruth Younger is an amazing woman who tries to create only joy among her family and collect all of those instances in a wonderful collage of memories.
While Ruth might be the sweetest in the play, her husband Walter is quite bitter and indeed my least favorite character in the play. Walter used all of the money for his liquor store and he later finds out that he lost of that too. Walter might be very ambitious or attempting to be experienced and manly, but actually he behaves very naive and stubborn. His dream of a liquor store is not exactly the best thing to bring around as a ‘dream’ around his ten year old son and a pregnant wife. He is the exact opposite of Ruth who is naturally supportive and compromising. His stupidity can be seen when he understands that he lost all his money in Act Two Scene Three and all he had to say is, “‘Yessss! All of it… It’s all gone…’”. He says this in a very aggressive tone almost not only blaming his luck for this stupidity but also his family for no good reason. It takes Walter several mistakes, numerous problems, and frequent fights throughout the entire play to realize that his dreams didn’t have anything to do with his family, and that he could use his own money and start a family for himself.
