Water Son, I feel like talking to you tonight.
Travis About what?
Walter Oh, about a lot of things. About you and what kind of man you going to be when you grown up . . . Son–son, what do you want to be when you grown up?
Travis A bus driver.
Walter (laughing a little) A what? Man, that ain’t nothing to want to be!
Travis Why not?
Walter ‘Cause, man–it ain’t big enough–you know what I mean?
When You Were Ten
If you’ve ever found yourself contemplating a career change, you may have consulted a life coach or read a blog post about the steps to making a definitive and logical choice . You may have received the recommendation to think back to what you enjoyed doing when you were a kid. Another common suggestion out there is to consider what you wanted to be when you were ten years old. All of this information can be valuable because what you enjoyed doing back then, gives you a clue as to how you were created and who you are on the inside. Most importantly, whatever job you thought was glamorous enough to spend your days doing was based on one thing–what you genuinely thought could be fulfilling–every single day.
The character of Travis in A Raisin in the Sun did not hesitate when his dad asked him what he wanted to be. He had an answer and a definite one. “A bus driver,” he said. This response was genuine and came from a place of purity within himself. He knew exactly what job he wanted. Something about the life of a bus driver dazzled him. But–that answer was not grand enough for Walter Lee.
Didn’t You Know You Were Unhappy?
Have you ever experienced a time when you were moving along in your life, and all of a sudden someone tells that you’re missing some “thing” that everybody else in the world wants? All of a sudden the life you are living or the future you are moving towards is deemed frivlous, unprofitable, or insuffienct. That’s essentially what happened to Travis in this scene in Act I. He was perfectly content thinking that one day he’d grow up to be a bus driver until he was told that he shouldn’t want that. His father’s reasons are routed in his own unhappiness with his place in the world, and it’s that unhappiness that motivates him to bash the desire of a little boy who dared to share his true self with one of the most influential people in his world.
A similar situation happens in the movie The Mirror Has Two Faces. The main character asks if she was pretty as little girl. She then recounts some of the things that her mother used to tell her–like to use her finger to lift her nose up so that it wouldn’t droop. The character says, “I would never would have thought that I wasn’t pretty, if it weren’t for those things that you said.” This example expounds upon the idea that we often don’t know something negative about ourselves or our desires until we’re told it. And then, unfortunately, we can never forget it. From then on, our confidence goes away and we doubt what we know to be true about ourselves.
Be the Bus Driver
There have been many times in my life when someone revealed to me that I was not who I thought I was. These were shocking and disappointing moments that did influence my future decisions and also affected my confidence in who I was. You may have experienced something similar. Travis did. His father, Walter Lee, does as well throughout the entire play of A Raisin in the Sun. But–we must regroup because we are trying to live our days well. We can take this new information and use it as just that. Information can either be internalized or, honestly, simply forgotten. It can be used to take action, to put in your pocket for another day, or discarded. My advice is to assess what you’ve been told and then to go back to what you know about who your are and who you have always been. If you have the soul of a bus driver within you, then you will not be happy doing any other job until you’ve had a chance to get behind that big steering wheel. Embrace who you are despite what anyone else tells you.
Be the bus driver, Travis. It’s your life, not your dad’s.
