Imagery In Sonny's Blues

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Music for Life
In 1924, James Baldwin was born during the Great Depression. By 1938, at the tender age of fourteen years old, young James became a Pentecostal preacher. However, in 1948 he renounced himself as a preacher and moved to Greenwich, New York. He was able to save enough money to move to Paris, France. James Baldwin became well known for his experience as a black male in America and also contributing heavily in the Civil Rights movement.

James Baldwin 's’ story “Sonny’s Blues” is about a young black musician named Sonny from Harlem, New York, who becomes addicted to heroin and is arrested for the use and distribution of the narcotic. After being released from prison, Sonny returns to his old neighborhood where he grew up, and moves in with his older brother (our narrator) and his family. After he settles in the siblings begin to talk about their angry feeling towards each other. They discuss …show more content…

He is in disbelief about the news he’s read in the newspaper. The author so elegantly uses imagery to depict the narrator 's emotions, as he describes “A great block of ice got settled in my belly and sat there all day long” (Baldwin pg.21).Baldwin uses such an effective choice of concrete imagery to show our narrator 's concern and fear for his brother. The reader is captivated by this quote being able to vividly imagine, how the cold block of ice feels in their stomach placing themselves in that moment of the narrator. Further imagery is used in “Sonny’s Blues displaying how the unnamed narrator 's clothes were drenched “I may have looked as though I was sitting in a steam bath.”(Baldwin pg.22) Describing how much he had sweated and revealing to the reader that the situation troubles him. This is crucial to the story, because it 's demonstrates the narrator’s stress over concern and love for his

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