"A Raisin in the Sun", written by Lorraine Hansberry, follows the life of a small black family's difficult struggle to keep their dreams of from tenants to owners alive and see them through to culmination. These dreams, as well as coming to terms with the dreams that are out of reach, are the focus and driving force behind this story of every persons struggle to attain goals that aren't always consistent with societies thoughts or ideas on a persons place in life. The internal difficulties of the family and the effects of these problems on the family is a major theme in the play.
             As the play begins a husband, Walter, and his wife, Ruth, are seen having a fight over Walter's dream to become a 'mover and shaker' in the business world by using an incoming insurance check for his mother as a down payment on a radical adventure. Walter tells his wife that, "I'm trying to talk to you 'bout myself and all you can say is eat them eggs and go to work", which is the first sign of Walter's recurring feelings that if someone in the family would just listen to him and put forth their trust his dreams would come to fulfillment. Following this argument Walter goes off to his job as a chauffeur which is the job he so longs to be done away with because he would rather "be Mr. Arnold [his employer] than be his chauffeur.
             This episode illustrates a major conflict throughout the story. As Walter dreams bigger and bigger he seems to leave the 'smaller' things such as his family behind. This movement away from the family is against the furtherance of the values and morals of the family. Where in the past his father would have been happy working for another man and caring for his family, Walter is more concerned with becoming self-employed or at least in a management position without really thinking about the consequences which may be imposed upon his family by his incessant need to 'elsewhere'. As seen later in the story Walter l
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