Each chapter will vary in focus, but will focus on Giovanni's room and the invisible man. The current chapter, the first, is an introduction to the essential theme of distorted racial and sexual identity as a result of the meanings that will be explored and discussed throughout this thesis. A literature review for each narrative serves as a conceptual framework used to help readers understand the proposed topic. The literature review analyzes the critical literary discourse that has been published for both James Baldwin's Giovanni's Room and Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man. Deconstructing what has been and is theorized by literary theorists and incorporating it into the aforementioned theme allows readers to familiarize themselves with the content that will be discussed later. Methodology is a supporting area of ​​the literature review. The methodology applies Jacques Lacan's “Mirror Stage” theory, which serves as further support to the previously mentioned theme of imperfect racial and sexual identity due to significant signs. In essence, the methodology applies Lacan's “Mirror Stage” theory to the central theme, in a means to illustrate how each protagonist of John's Room and the Invisible Man encounters adversity, both sexually and racially, as a product of underlying signs found in each of them. narrative. The introduction, literature review, and methodology work cohesively as a foundation