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Themes, symbols and plot of “sonny’s blues” essay
Themes, symbols and plot of “sonny’s blues” essay
Literary analysis of sonny's blues
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In most short stories the entire plot progress within one area. The local and global settings do not change, but “Sonny’s Blues” by James Baldwin is a little different. “Sonny’s Blues” follows an unnamed protagonist trying to reconnect with his younger brother Sonny, who struggles with heroin addiction. In the story, the Global setting of Harlem stays the same while the local varies from scene to scene. These changes in setting aren’t accidental. This was a conscious decision by Baldwin and it is the job of the reader to understand why the changes in the setting matter. The multiple local settings of the story are used to express mood, theme, and symbolism. The first setting introduced in the story is a subway. The subway is where the narrator gets the news that Sonny has been arrested. The gloomy atmosphere of the subway adds to the narrator’s sense of dread. The third line of paragraph one reads, “I stared at it in the swinging lights of the subway car, and in the faces and bodies of the people, and in my own face, trapped in the darkness which roared outside.” The theme of darkness is also mentioned and reoccurs throughout the text. From there the local setting shifts to a high school classroom, where the narrator reflects on the news and reminds himself what Sonny has done. In the third and …show more content…
This time the setting is inside of a taxi. The brothers finally met in person for the first time in over a year. The both of them are anxious yet excited the catch up with one another. During the taxi ride, the protagonist reflects on how the Harlem has changed since childhood. In the first line of paragraph sixty-nine the protagonist says “Those who got out always left something of themselves behind, as some animal amputate a leg and leave it in the trap.” What did Sonny and his brother leave behind? When looking at their relationship, the taxi ride is symbolic of the brothers moving forward in their efforts to
The last four paragraphs of `Sonny's Blues' are written in what some people like to call `pencil' form. This means that they are almost interchangeable, they are written in a form where one paragraph could be before another and each could end the story. The order of them does not seem to matter so much as the meaning does. Which in itself shows how much is really packed into each paragraph. The end of this short story is told in a very common narrative form that tells exactly what happened detail by detail. Through the use of "then" as the first word in each paragraph, the narrator expresses to the audience what is happening exactly as it happens to him, piece by piece and feeling by feeling. This gives you a little insight into his psyche in a much more personal way than what an author usually attempts to convey with the word "I," and truly instills a bond between the reader and the narrator. You could almost say it makes you trust him and believe the rest of the story is true. Baldwin's utilization of personified description as well as the flow of his words make the piece read as if it actually was a jazz song by describing the feeling any person who has heard jazz knows. He leaves enough ambiguousness to really make you feel the music through the words, yet gives as mu...
In James Baldwin's "Sonny's Blues" a pair of brothers try to make sense of the urban decay that surrounds and fills them. This quest to puzzle out the truth of the shadows within their hearts and on the streets takes on a great importance. Baldwin meets his audience at a halfway mark: Sonny has already fallen into drug use, and is now trying to return to a clean life with his brother's aid. The narrator must first attempt to understand and make peace with his brother's drug use before he can extend his help and heart to him. Sonny and his brother both struggle for acceptance. Sonny wants desperately to explain himself while also trying to stay afloat and out of drugs. Baldwin amplifies these struggles with a continuous symbolic motif of light and darkness. Throughout "Sonny's Blues" there is a pervasive sense of darkness which represents the reality of life on the streets of Harlem. The darkness is sometimes good but usually sobering and sometimes fearful, just as reality may be scary. Light is not simply a stereotypical good, rather it is a complex consciousness, an awareness of the dark, and somehow, within that knowledge there lies hope. Baldwin's motif of light and darkness in "Sonny's Blues" is about the sometimes painful nature of reality and the power gained from seeing it.
When identifying the common theme of Baldwin’s short stories “Sonny’s Blues” and “Going to Meet the Man”, it is clever to first distinguish the writing style of this creative author. Baldwin was a famous writer of his period because of the way he interpreted reality into a story. Around this point in America, racial tension and self-identity between cultures were at a peak and sparked many different ideas towards Baldwin’s writings. Baldwin intentionally expresses himself through his writings to create a realistic voice to his audience, making the story easy to capture a visual of. In one story in particular, “Go Tell It on the Mountain” Baldwin creates a novel
In James Baldwin’s “Sonny’s Blues,” the unspoken brotherly bond between the narrator and his younger brother Sonny is illustrated through the narrator’s point of view. The two brothers have not spoken in years until the narrator receives a letter from Sonny after his daughter dies. He takes this moment as an important sign from Sonny and feels the need to respond. While both Sonny and the narrator live in separate worlds, all Sonny needs is a brother to care for him while the narrator finds himself in the past eventually learning his role as an older brother.
Discuss place and how James Baldwin uses elements of setting to convey Sonny’s Blues’ larger message or theme.
The first of these occurs on page 124, just after Sonny's older brother learns of Sonny's arrest, when he spots one of Sonny's old friends from their younger days. Sonny's brother immediately expresses his disdain for this man, thinking “I'd never liked him. And now, even though he was a grown-up man, he still hung around that block, still spent hours on the street corners, was always high and raggy. … Now, abruptly, I hated him.” In the aftermath of Sonny's drug-induced arrest, it is easy to understand why Sonny's brother would feel anger towards this person. However, he goes on to state “'don't tell me your sad story, if it was up to me, I'd give you one.' Then I felt guilty – guilty, probably, for never having supposed that the poor bastard had a story of his own, much less a sad one.” In this moment, Sonny's brother experiences a revelation that causes him to relate this man to his own brother, noting the parallels between the two. His newfound empathy allows him to view Sonny's friend in a completely new light, making an effort to understand how he ended up in such sad shape, rather than merely dismissing him as a lowlife. Sonny's brother realizes that any label he applies to this man could just as easily be cast on Sonny through the eyes of
The opening paragraph of the story contains a metaphorical passage: "I stared at it in the swinging light of the subway car, and in the faces and bodies of the people, and in my own face, trapped in the darkness which roared outside"(349). This reference is significant because it is a contrast to the dismal society that the narrator and his brother Sonny live in. The darkness is the portrayal of the community of Harlem that is trapped, in their surroundings by physical, economic, and social barriers. The obvious nature of darkness has overcome the occupants of the Harlem community. The narrator, an algebra teacher, observes a depressing similarity between his students and his brother, Sonny. This is true because the narrator is fearful for his students falling into a life of crime and drugs, as did his brother. The narrator notes that the cruel realities of the streets have taken away the possible light from the lives of his brother and his students. The narrator makes an insightful connection between the darkness that Sonny faced and the darkness that the young boys are presently facing. This is illustrated in the following quote:
James Baldwin's short story, "Sonny's Blues", tells the tale of two brothers, as they come to an understanding of each other. The use of imagery and figurative language can help the reader grasp a deeper meaning of what the narrator is focusing on. In "Sonny's Blues", the predominant imageries throughout the narrative are the reoccurring contrasting images of light and darkness, symbolizing hope and despair.
The story Sonny’s Blues by James Baldwin is a story about people’s actions and the effect that they have on the environment and the people around them. The Narrator is the older brother and the keeper of Sonny after his mother passes away. It is his duty to watch over his younger brother and to help guide him through life and to make the correct decisions. This caused great distress for him because he was never able to control Sonny and the life that he chooses to live. Sonny is The Narrators brother and is a dynamic character who decides early on what he wants to do with his life. This creates a constant tug of war with his brother which ends with him denouncing his brother and they also ceased talking for a long time. Sonny is also addicted
Sonny, seems to be having hard times in life. He has problems with drugs within the city and he has gone to jail. He believes that to better himself, he needs to leave the city. Within
Several passages found throughout "Sonny's Blues" indicate that as a whole, the neighborhood of Harlem is in the turmoil of a battle between good and evil. The narrator describes Sonny's close encounters with the evil manifested in drugs and crime, as well as his assertive attempts at distancing himself from the darker side. The streets and communities of Harlem are described as being a harsh environment which claims the lives of many who have struggled against the constant enticement of emotional escape through drugs, and financial escape through crime. Sonny's parents, just like the others in Harlem, have attempted to distance their children from the dark sides of their community, but inevitably, they are all aware that one day each child will face a decisionb for the first time. Each child will eventually join the ranks of all the other members of society fighting a war against evil at the personal level so cleanly brought to life by James Baldwin. Amongst all the chaos, the reader is introduced to Sonny's special secret weapon against the pressures of life: Jazz. Baldwin presents jazz as being a two-edged sword capable of expressing emotions like no other method, but also a presenting grave danger to each individual who bears it. Throughout the the story, the reader follows Sonny's past and present skirmishes with evil, his triumphs, and his defeats. By using metaphorical factors such as drugs and jazz in a war-symbolizing setting, Baldwin has put the focus of good and evil to work at the heart of "Sonny's Blues."
Brothers tend to grow apart yet eventually find a way to revive an old beat up relationship. These brothers grew up on the rough streets of Harlem and went their separate ways. Sonny was a drug-addicted musician and his older brother was a high school algebra teacher with a family. The way the two brothers reunite through addiction, memories and strife make their bond seem stronger than ever. Sonny’s Blues, by James Baldwin, is a story about enlightenment through brotherhood when Sonny and his brother go to the club.
"Sonny’s Blues by James Baldwin." Short Story Criticism. Ed. Anna Sheets-Nesbitt. Vol. 33. Detroit: Gale Group, 1999. 115-157. Literature Criticism Online. Gale. Web. 3 May 2015.
He chose to distance himself from his brother and was able to escape the dark streets of Harlem, going onto college and becoming an educator. He had in a way taken on a different identity and was no longer familiar with the true struggles that Sonny and the other African Americans in Harlem faced; nor the culture that he once was raised.
(36) It seems to setting the stage for later. And he saw the younger students and they remind him to remember Sonny in that age. Another flashback like Sonny’s brother saw their mother alive in the last time. This flashback tell mother afraid of her living and no one will take care of Sonny. In Sonny’s letter he mentioned “Give my love to Isabel and the kids