This paper explains that, although the audience is cognizant that social change is on the horizon, the characters themselves,
at first ,are only concerned with their immediate, personal changes and struggles. The author points out that the
antagonist of the play is the character's collective lack of movement and motion: Jordan is 'stuck' in his own way, in a quest for a woman long lost; Weedy and Alberta are 'stuck' in their apartment; and Uncle Doc is mired in a life of gambling. The paper determines that the three main members of the family all represent different, but ineffective, pre-civil rights ways of black Americans to cope with societal and institutionalized racism: religion in the form of Weedy; self-sacrifice and
self-denial in the form of Alberta; and a recourse to get-rich-quick schemes and the drug of gambling in the form of Uncle Doc.