dried up grape: 5

Mama was at odds with her children so often throughout Lorraine Hansberry's A Raisin in the Sun because of the generation gap between them.  Mama just could not wrap her head around Walter and Beneatha's reasonings for the things they did.  She had lived in a simpler time, where families were hard-working and God-fearing.  I could feel how much it broke her heart throughout the play as she realized more and more how far her children had strayed from what they had been taught.  The respect difference of the gap shows when Mama is  passionately arguing with Beneatha about how she speaks of God.  "It don't sound nice for a young girl to say things like that..." (Hansberry, 457).  Mama is constantly arguing with Walter about their financial situation and how one should view and value money.  It really hits Mama how different her world is from her children when Walter makes the claim that money is life.  "Once upon a time freedom used to be life--now it's money.  I gues the world really do change..." (Hansberry, 475).  What I thought was strange though, was that there was an even larger gap in age between Mama and Travis, yet those two got along better than anyone else in the play!  They both had simpler, more innocent minds.