A Raisin in the Sun - Richard Wright

Brrrrrrriiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiinng!
An alarm clock clanged in the dark and silent room. A bed spring creaked. A woman's voice sang out impatiently:
"Bigger, shut that thing off!"

-the opening of Richard Wright's Native Son

Walter is in some ways similar to Bigger Thomas, the protagonist of Richard Wright's Native Son.
Both works are set in the South Side of Chicago during the 1950s.
Travis' story about the killing of the rat is very much like the opening scene from Native Son in which Bigger corners a rat in the family's apartment and kills it with a hammer.
Bigger Thomas dreams of escaping the conditions of his life by becoming a pilot. Symbolically, Bigger wants to fly away from the difficulties of his condition.
Wright's novel also uses snow as a symbol of the oppressive influence of white culture on blacks during the 1950s. During the entire novel it snows on Chicago. The snow seems intent on breaking Bigger's spirit; it seems to hunt him in the same way the police track him down through the South Side's tenements.
Wright is the author of Native Son and Black Boy.