In Topdog/Underdog, Suzan-Lori Parks uses irony in the first names of the two brothers and their communication with one another to explore the dynamics of Lincoln and Booth's relationship as brother's, within their life experiences. By doing this, Parks is critiquing their life style and their life choices, which is often revealing her knowledge in tragedy through their everyday life. Her awareness of American culture, history, and struggle are shown throughout this play and is well constructed. She combines the brothers story through irony and at the same time tragedy. The brothers first name is a historical connection to a time in history in the United States and slavery. The culture is expressed through the life of a black man playing …show more content…
She shows the irony with Booth desperately wanting Lincoln to help him learn and improve throwing three-card monte. The irony in the power struggle between these two brothers due to this game, which is not want Booth is great at and needs to stick with what he is; stealing. “I walked in there and walk out and they didn't as much bat an eye. That's how smooth lil bro be.”(Parks 33) This shows the choices Booth makes to make a living and survive life they way he knows best, which is different from Lincoln's choices in life. Booth also shows irony in his relationship with his non-existent girlfriend, Grace. To cover up his tragic and miserable life, he brags to his brother about what he got in life, how he gets it and where it is going to get him in life. “I got a woman I gotta impress tonight.”(Parks 37) Booth admits that Grace uses Booth for his money, but he doesn't understand that money is not going to make him happy in the future and can not get you what you …show more content…
Having the girl, the money, and trying to be better at the hustle is greed. Greed destroys and takes over everything someone has and Parks shows that with Booth taking is own brothers life. “Think you can take my shit. My shit. That shit was mine.”(Parks 114) Booth was feeling like the underdog at the moment when he lost the game to his brother and Booth couldn't take the stress of life anymore so he shot his brother. The irony is that, even though he thinks he rid of the problem, life still has more obstacles ahead and killing does not solve them. Booth doesn't realize it, but Lincoln is someone that he needs, because in he was with him through everything in life from the start and keeps him leveled in life. Money is not the answer for having a good life, but Booth's motivation is from money, “Gracell see me in this and she gonna ask me tuh marry her.”(Parks 32-33) Ironic, knowing Grace does not want Booth, but he thinks money can win her over
“Chasing Lincoln’s Killer” was a true story about the assassination attempts of Abraham Lincoln, the sixteenth president of the United States. Lincoln was president during the Civil War, which was a war between the Union and Confederate. Most everybody got to choose a side to root for either the Northern policies or the Southern cause. Although John Wilkes Booth worked in the north, Booth was an unyielding supporter of the Confederate cause. Booth execrated President Lincoln and what he stood for. John Wilkes Booth was a famous actor, and could have had many assassination chances, including Lincoln’s second inauguration. Wanting the south to win the war, he never wanted the punishment of assassinating the president of the United States. Being
Booth had got the news that the president would be at the Ford’s theatre. This was great news for john both Mr. and Mrs. Lincoln will be there in the same place. “Booth heard the big news: in just eight hours the man who was the subject of all his hating and plotting would stand on the very stone steps here he now sat. “Booth began to plain his assassination without having to hunt for Lincoln. John had a deep hatred for Lincoln, he had hated the state that our country had been in.
In Chasing Lincoln’s Killer, by James L. Swanson, the main characters were; John Wilkes Booth, Dr. Leale, Abraham Lincoln (even though he dies.) When John Wilkes Booth (a.k.a Booth) found out that the North had won the Civil War, he felt anger and disgust but he could do nothing. Booth had one plot that the book talked about and that was to kidnap the president and sell him to the leaders of the South but that plot never got put into action. When booth went to Ford's theatre got a letter, Booth worked at the theatre, the letter that said that the President of the United states would be visiting ford's theatre quickly he put a plot into works. First he went to get accomplices and they too would kill someone that night. When the time had come to Booth snuck into the President’s box, not even noticed he pulled out a gun and shot a bullet into the left side and under the left ear of the President's head. That didn’t kill the President, yet. When Booth tried to leave he was stopped by General Henry Rathbone, they had a knife fight while trying to stop both of them from leaving, although Booth got away jumping from the President's box and onto the stage shouting "Sic Semper Tyrannis" (Chasing Lincoln's Killer, by James L. Swanson.)
In James Baldwin’s short story “Sonny’s Blues,” and Ernest Hemingway’s short story “A Clean, Well-Lighted Place,” both have a theme of agony and desire which are represented by characters from the stories such as Sonny from Sonny’s Blues, and the old waiter in A Clean, Well-Lighted Place. Sonny’s Blue’s is a story that are about two brothers who grew up in Harlem New York, and how one brother which is Sonny faced several hardships during his time there, such as doing drugs, getting in fights with their father, and dropping out of school. The older brother was asked to take care of his younger brother as a dying wish from their mother, so the brother asked Sonny what he wanted to do and sonny replied by saying he wanted to become a jazz musician,
Another family is African American. They live in Harlem, which was populated only by African Americans at the time. The main character in this family that we follow, Coalhouse, is a Ragtime piano player. The next family represents the immigrants of that time. Tateh, a Jewish immigrant, arrives at Ellis Island and faces the challenges of achieving the American dream.
James Baldwin, author of Sonny’s Blues, was born in Harlem, NY in 1924. During his career as an essayist, he published many novels and short stories. Growing up as an African American, and being “the grandson of a slave” (82) was difficult. On a day to day basis, it was a constant battle with racial discrimination, drugs, and family relationships. One of Baldwin’s literature pieces was Sonny’s Blues in which he describes a specific event that had a great impact on his relationship with his brother, Sonny. Having to deal with the life-style of poverty, his relationship with his brother becomes affected and rivalry develops. Conclusively, brotherly love is the theme of the story. Despite the narrator’s and his brother’s differences, this theme is revealed throughout the characters’ thoughts, feelings, actions, and dialogue. Therefore, the change in the narrator throughout the text is significant in understanding the theme of the story. It is prevalent to withhold the single most important aspect of the narrator’s life: protecting his brother.
Family structure is often built on foundations consisting of, trust, principal, and unconditional love. Relatives are often a reflection of the morals, and dignity our guardians instilled in us. The struggle in families arises when an individual does not live up to the standards set for them, by family, and sometimes results in incarceration, or use of narcotics. In “Sonny’s Blues” by James Baldwin, readers encounter two brothers who are brought up in the rough neighborhood of Harlem, New York. Although Sonny, the younger brother, chooses a different life path in heroin usage, and in being a musician, his older brother, the narrator, becomes an algebra teacher. Despite not being in each other’s lives for a period of time, the knitted fraternal relationship that they share proves to be eternal regardless of their loss of contact. Ultimately, this story is an amazing illustration of how two people are from the same blood and home, are never quite the same, yet the love of a family will always be kindled. In the following articles "Sonny's Blues": A Message in Music, by Suzy Bernstein Goldman, explains how people often explain their emotions through music. In another article titled, -“ Black Literature Revisited: "’Sonny's Blues’" by Elaine R. Ognibene, she elaborates on the effects music has to bring two people together. Finally, in “The Jazz-Blues Motif in James Baldwin's "’Sonny's Blues’" by Richard N Albert discusses, the bound in families and enlightens on the cliché saying that blood is thicker than water. Ultimately, Albert provides the best interpretation of the short story “Sonny Blues,” because it’s more realistic and relatable from my own personal experience.
For example the family go on a fun road trip across the country and they end up being murder. O 'Connor uses a few types of irony to convey her message about what makes a person good. In the first paragraph the Grandmother says she would never take her children where there is criminal on the loose and if she did she wouldn’t know what to do. However, the Grandmother takes the family to a dirt road which will later lead them to their demise. The story 's irony focuses on the family 's communication with the Misfit. "She would of been a good woman, if it had been somebody there to shoot her every minute of her life" (O’Connor). The characters don 't realize whats going when death is pointing right at them and as a family they grow closer than they ever have, despite them being dreadful
In the context of Baldwin’s “Sonny’s Blues” story, the life among his family and others reflected many events. Baldwin’s “Sonny’s Blues” resembled the life of his brother who wanted to make a career established in music before completing high school. As the story went on, there were emotions and bonding among each other and lastly forming some sort of peace. By peace meaning they both established ground rules of what their life would be after going through the trouble. Baldwin’s “Sonny’s Blues” settled a principle of integrity of respect and experienced symbolism as a factor of understanding situations.
life in the mid to late twentieth century and the strains of society on African Americans. Set in a small neighborhood of a big city, this play holds much conflict between a father, Troy Maxson, and his two sons, Lyons and Cory. By analyzing the sources of this conflict, one can better appreciate and understand the way the conflict contributes to the meaning of the work.
James Baldwin is a writer from the twentieth century. He wrote “Sonny’s Blues,” a short story with the image in Harlem, as many of his stories were, was published in 1957. “Sonny’s Blues” is about the narrator, who remained nameless, and how his life changed after he discovers his brother’s drug addiction. “Sonny’s Blues” highlights the theme of light and darkness throughout the story’s good and bad event, the struggles of brotherly love, and the dilemmas that the narrator and Sonny face as siblings by being raised the same but taking totally different routes in their lives.
“Sonny’s Blues” revolves around the narrator as he learns who his drug-hooked, piano-playing baby brother, Sonny, really is. The author, James Baldwin, paints views on racism, misery and art and suffering in this story. His written canvas portrays a dark and continual scene pertaining to each topic. As the story unfolds, similarities in each generation can be observed. The two African American brothers share a life similar to that of their father and his brother. The father’s brother had a thirst for music, and they both travelled the treacherous road of night clubs, drinking and partying before his brother was hit and killed by a car full of white boys. Plagued, the father carried this pain of the loss of his brother and bitterness towards the whites to his grave. “Till the day he died he weren’t sure but that every white man he saw was the man that killed his brother.”(346) Watching the same problems transcend onto the narrator’s baby brother, Sonny, the reader feels his despair when he tries to relate the same scenarios his father had, to his brother. “All that hatred down there”, he said “all that hatred and misery and love. It’s a wonder it doesn’t blow the avenue apart.”(355) He’s trying to relate to his brother that even though some try to cover their misery with doing what others deem as “right,” others just cover it with a different mask. “But nobody just takes it.” Sonny cried, “That’s what I’m telling you! Everybody tries not to. You’re just hung up on the way some people try—it’s not your way!”(355) The narrator had dealt with his own miseries of knowing his father’s plight, his Brother Sonny’s imprisonment and the loss of his own child. Sonny tried to give an understanding of what music was for him throughout thei...
In conclusion, the short story "Sonny's Blues" by James Baldwin brings out two main themes: irony and suffering. You can actually feel the pain that Baldwin's characters experience; and distinguish the two different lifestyles of siblings brought up in the same environment. The older brother remaining nameless is a fabulous touch that really made me want to read on. This really piqued my interest and I feel it can lead to many discussions on why this technique was used. I really enjoyed this story; it was a fast and enjoyable reading. Baldwin keeps his readers thinking and talking long after they have finished reading his stories. His writing technique is an art, which very few, if any, can duplicate.
The conflict in this story can be seen when the main character fights with the two men who have come onto the stage to get the bingo wheel controller away from him. This conflict is not only symbolic of his life, but also the struggle of African Americans, during the 1930’s and 1940’s, to gain control of their lives when they...
In his dramatic monologue, Robert Browning uses irony, diction, and imagery to achieve a haunting effect.