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Sonny's Blues
This reordering of events is much like the narrator's mind might operate when thinking about his past compared to his present. Quite often, when we are troubled by something, our minds drift to...
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Sonny's Blues
The narrator's mother asks him to keep an eye on his younger brother. But the narrator doesn't understand Sonny, and quickly dismisses Sonny when he gets into trouble. As Sonny's friend in the...
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Sonny's Blues
Sonny always used music as a way to escape. It is the only thing that gave him hope and kept him dreaming for a better life. His music inspired him and gave him hope for the future. His brother...
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Sonny's Blues
One way the narration shifts at the end of the "Sonny's Blues" is by moving to a solidly present perspective instead of relying heavily on flashbacks. Throughout the story, the narrator moves back...
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Sonny's Blues
At the heart of James Baldwin's story "Sonny's Blues" (1957) is a man trying to get his brother to listen to him. The "listening" is both literal and metaphorical: Sonny wants his reluctant older...
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Sonny's Blues
"Sonny's Blues" is set in Harlem, which is the place Baldwin was born. Thus, the setting Baldwin knows so well influences the plight of Sonny. Baldwin was born to a single mother and had eight...
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Sonny's Blues
The elements you choose are somewhat subjective. I would say that conflict plays an important role in this story, as the narrator struggles to understand why his brother, Sonny, has been arrested...
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Sonny's Blues
Baldwin’s short story “Sonny’s Blues” was first published by the Partisan Review in 1957. It is set in Harlem, and centers on the relationship between two characters—an algebra teacher and his...
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Sonny's Blues
Sonny's brother, the narrator of the story, has a respectable job as an algebra teacher in a Harlem high school. He has "escaped" the poverty and despair of Harlem to embrace a middle class...
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Sonny's Blues
I think it's important to consider the symbolism of ice in conjunction with the stomach, where the narrator feels it settling. Icy climates are not conducive to most forms of life. Ice symbolizes...
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Sonny's Blues
"Sonny's Blues" depicts the universal struggle of human relationships. The narrator has always longed for Sonny to achieve greatness and happiness—by the narrator's standards. Sonny instead longs...
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Sonny's Blues
Isabel, the narrator's wife, is important to the story because she has been so much a part of Sonny's life. She both loves him and hurts him, showing the complexity of interacting with hm. We learn...
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Sonny's Blues
The narrator makes these remarks in relation to the music played by his brother Sonny. What he appears to be saying is that there's something in the music that his brother hears but other people do...
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Sonny's Blues
In this story, we see the way family binds people together and rips them apart. The narrator and his brother Sonny have a tumultuous relationship, yet in Sonny's letter, we see the longing for...
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Sonny's Blues
James Baldwin titled his short story “Sonny’s Blues” because this title appropriately captures the dual meaning the author intended. Baldwin’s story is told in the first-person by the titular...
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Sonny's Blues
The two brothers in "Sonny's Blues" have both tried to escape from Harlem. Both join the armed forces and travel to the other side of the world to fight in a war (presumably either the Second World...
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Sonny's Blues
This is a great exercise in analyzing the character of the narrator who struggles with conflicting feelings toward his younger brother, Sonny. Here are a couple of quotes to get you started. When...
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Sonny's Blues
In his 1957 short story "Sonny's Blues," James Baldwin uses a variety of literary elements to develop complex narrative with multiple thematic concerns. The story is told from a first-person point...
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Sonny's Blues
Th narrator's reaction to pain and human loss is to shut down emotionally. For example, he cuts Sonny off until the polio death of his own young daughter brings a pain he can't deny. This causes...
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Sonny's Blues
In "Sonny's Blues," the blues are both Sonny's suffering in life but also the music he plays that transforms the suffering into power, freedom, and hope. For a long time, Sonny's older brother...
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Sonny's Blues
The images of light and dark begin in the first paragraph of “Sonny’s Blues,” with the swinging lights of the subway car contrasting with the darkness outside. The narrator’s own face appears...
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Sonny's Blues
In James Baldwin's short story "Sonny's Blues," we see a great deal of friction between the narrator and his younger brother, Sonny. Despite the promise he made to his mother to be there for his...
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Sonny's Blues
In the penultimate paragraph of “Sonny’s Blues,” the narrator says that he understands at last that Sonny “could help us to be free if we would listen, that he would never be free until he did.” He...
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Sonny's Blues
Much like their uncle and father in relationship, the narrator and his brother Sonny of "Sonny's Blues" grew up in the "killing streets" of Harlem, yet respond to their environment in different...
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Sonny's Blues
Having grown up in the "vivid killing streets" of Harlem, Sonny, a sensitive musical man, senses the fear about which the older people do not speak; he suffers from the despair of his environment,...
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Sonny's Blues
Flashback is important in “Sonny’s Blues” because it provides a context for the events of the story. Knowing what happened in the past informs us of the present. Time in the story goes back and...
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Sonny's Blues
The climax of the short story "Sonny's Blues" is when the brothers wittiness a scene at a revival meeting. The narrator witnesses it from an upstairs window while Sonny witnesses it from the...
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Sonny's Blues
The relationship between Sonny and his brother is extremely complex, to say the least. Baldwin designs these characters to act as character foils; therefore, accentuating each's character by...
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Sonny's Blues
Sonny uses the blues to soothe the suffering he feels. Sonny feels the harshness of growing up in Harlem more intensely than his brother does. For the most part, Sonny's pain comes from the...
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Sonny's Blues
In "Sonny's Blues," the narrator is directly characterized as having little compassion for drug users. For instance, when Sonny's heroin-using friend comes to the school yard (and the narrator has...
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Sonny's Blues
In "Sonny's Blues," the a-chronological frame of the story surrounds the flashback, which occurs in correct chronology. Therefore, the flashback represents, first, the exposition of the plot with...
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Sonny's Blues
After Sonny has been living with the narrator, the narrator watches his brother who stands on the edge of the crowd that listens to the music of a street revival, music that seems "to soothe a...
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Sonny's Blues
Sonny is a complex character who definitely cares about more than just drugs and music. Here are four of his other passions. It is clear that Sonny cares a lot about his brother (the narrator) a...
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Sonny's Blues
Sonny and his brother representing Cain and Abel? That's a new one to me. I didn't notice one brother killing the other, or even trying to. In a general way, "Sonny's Blues" is a story of...
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Sonny's Blues
In James Baldwin's "Sonny's Blues," music is the central focus of Sonny's life—it is the only thing that seems to release him from his suffering: his addiction, growing up black, feeling alone and...
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Sonny's Blues
Music promises freedom to Sonny from the blues of his life. He has used heroin to give him a short respite from his sufferings, but Sonny realizes heroin will eventually kill him. So if Sonny were...
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Sonny's Blues
The narrator of "Sonny's Blues" by James Baldwin finally talks with the brother from whom he has been alienated. Years ago Sonny would come by his house, but the narrator perceived him as "loose...
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Sonny's Blues
There are two major characters in "Sonny's Blues," Sonny and Sonny's older brother. Each of these characters has an independent conflict and together they share another conflict. Sonny's conflict...
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Sonny's Blues
"I had kept it outside me for a long time," Baldwin's narrator says in the fourth paragraph of his story, "Sonny's Blues." The news of his brother Sonny's arrest resurrects what the narrator has...
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Sonny's Blues
It seems that your contention is that Sonny's environment is so difficult for him that he attempts to escape it through his use of heroine. For your points that will defend the threats that...
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Sonny's Blues
With suffering as the main theme of James Baldwin's story, one way to examine this theme is through the development of Sonny's character along with the narrator's that are often "trapped in the...
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Sonny's Blues
In one segment of a memory flashback in "Sonny's Blues," Sonny's brother recalls a conversation with their mother during which she tells a family secret about their uncle, their father's brother....
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Sonny's Blues
I think it is important to realise when reading this story that the ordering of events, including various flashbacks, is not strictly chronological. Rather, the author has carefully chosen a series...
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Sonny's Blues
"Sonny's Blues" is the tale of brothers who grow to understand each other as one brother has assimilated somewhat into mainstream society while the other remains marginalized. But, the two brothers...
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Sonny's Blues
"Sonny's Blues" is told in first-person point of view by Sonny's brother, and he remains nameless throughout the story. Even though the main story deals with Sonny's life, we also get the...
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Sonny's Blues
As Kip Wheeler Ph.D. says, "Usually in medias res is a technique used to heighten dramatic tension or to create a sense of mystery." The technique of in medias res, Latin for in the middle, allows...
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Sonny's Blues
The narrator reads about his brother Sonny in the newspaper as he rides the subway to the school where he teaches. Sonny has been arrested in a raid for selling and using heroin. Because he has...
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Sonny's Blues
The brothers in "Sonny's Blues" go to the jazz club after having a revelatory conversation in which the older brother listens to Sonny's point of view for the first time. He learns that Sonny...
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Sonny's Blues
There are many conflicts in this story, both external and internal. A few of the internal ones are in Sonny and his brother, the narrator. Sonny's internal conflict is about his battle with drugs...
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Sonny's Blues
Two adjectives that may be used to describe two conflicting feelings within the narrator when he examines his feelings about his younger brother, Sonny, are shadowed and burning [participle used as...
