I'll Hand You the World (7)

TRAVIS: What's the matter, Daddy? You drunk?

WALTER: (sweetly, more sweetly than we have ever known him)

No, Daddy ain't drunk. Daddy ain't going to never be drunk

again . . .

TRAVIS: Well, good night, Daddy.

The FATHER has come from behind the couch and leans over,

embracing his son.

WALTER: Son feeI, l like talking to you tonight.

TRAVIS: About what?

WALTER: Oh, about a lot of things. About you an what kind of

man you going to be when you grow up. Son—son ... what do

you want to be when you grow 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.

TRAVIS: I don't know then I can't  make up my mind. Sometimes

Mama asks me that too. And sometimes when I tell her I just

want to be like you—she says she don't want me to be like that

and sometimes she says she does . . .

WALTER (gathering him up in his arms): You know what, Travis?

In seven years you going to be seventeen years old. And things

is going to be very different with us in seven years, Travis . . .

One day when you are seventeen I'll com home—home from

my office downtown somewhere.

TRAVIS: You don't work in no office Daddy.

WALTER: No but after tonight, After what your daddy gonna do

tonight, there's going to office —a whole lot of offices . . .

TRAVIS: What you gonna do tonight, Daddy?

WALTER: You wouldn't understand yet, son but your daddy's

gonna make a transaction ... a business transaction that's going

to change our lives . . . That's how come one day when you 'bout

seventeen years old I'll come home and I'll be pretty tired, you

know what I mean after, a day of conferences and secretaries

getting things wrong the way they do ... 'cause an executive's

life is hell, man—(The more he talks the farther away he gets.)

And I'll pull the car up on the driveway . just a plain black

Chrysler, I think, with white walls-no-black tires. More elegant.

Rich people don't have to be flashy . . . though I'll have to

get something a little sportier for Ruth—maybe a Cadillac convertible

 to do her shopping in ... And I'll come up the steps to

the house and the gardener will be clipping away at the hedges

and he'll say, "Good evening, Mr. Younger." And I'll say,

"Hello, Jefferson, how are you this evening?" And I'll go inside

and Ruth will come downstairs and meet me at the door and

we'll kiss each other and she'll take my arm and we'll go up to

your room to see you sitting on the floor with the catalogues of

all the great schools in America around you . . . All the great

schools in the world! And —and I'll say, all right son—it's your

seventeenth birthday, what is it you've decided? . . . Just tell me

where you want to go to school and you'll go. Just tell me, what

it is you want to be—and you'll be it. . . Whatever you want to

be—Yessir! (He holds his arms open for Travis) just

name it, son ("Travis leaps into them.) and I hand you the

world!

This may be one of the most crucial moments of the play. When Walter expresses what he wants for his blank future, it's ironic because Travis may not be as understanding of what Walter is saying. It's the childhood Walter never got to have. This is when Walter is expressing his ideas of his version of the American Dream. How Walter's hard work and determination can make it a reality.