tyMarisa PollockMrs. MarkwoodEnglish IV APFFebruary 24, 2014AP Literature and Composition Research PaperAs Carl Schurz once said: “Out of equality of rights arises the identity of our highest interests; you cannot subvert the rights of your neighbor without dealing a dangerous blow to yourself. Naturally, human self-esteem revolves around the idea of ​​what others think of us and writers of this era emphasize the idea of ​​freeing oneself from the norms of society. In the two inspiring literary works “A Raisin in the Sun” by Lorraine Hansberry and “Invisible Man” by Ralph Ellison, both authors illustrate how the lack of civil equality leads to self-discovery. low social norms reveal what is truly important in life. Some people will only truly know what is important when they have suffered a lot. A dream is blinded by the idea of ​​not corresponding to it; in the civil rights era, this is almost impossible. In the late 1950s, the play A Raisin in the Sun presented the solution to this problem. The Youngers are a working-class American family living on the south side of Chicago. They live out their days in their tiny "rat trap" of an apartment where the bleak future reflects the atmosphere and dying hope. This novel symbolizes the abandonment of the human spirit in the face of what the rest of black society has accepted as normal. The man of the house, Walter Younger, is your average idealist. Compared to his father "Big Walter", Walter Younger has high expectations in hopes of making a lot of money. Walter's mother, Lena Younger, can see the clear difference in value for her son's and husband's motivation and tells her daughter-in-law how "Big Walter used to say, he...... in the middle of a paper..... .so don't support it. He feels alone, exhausted, from trying to make his family see things. As he kneels next to his mother, he says, “Sometimes when I'm in town and I pass nice, quiet restaurants where the white boys are sitting and talking about things…. . . sitting there closing deals worth millions of dollars. . . sometimes I see that guys don't look much older than me. (Hansberry 74-75). Hansberry presents the internal struggle of African Americans against each other and how they must eliminate their differences in order to advance in areas of American society. To the extent that the play reveals racism, “it considers racism in the context of a particular family's dreams. In other words, Mom makes her decisions based on her love for her family rather than ideological opposition to segregation. (Domina 1).