Sonny's Blues

There are a lot of conflicts at work in "Sonny's Blues." The overarching conflict in the story is that between black existence and white society, and this has strongly influenced how the narrator...

After the narrator of "Sonny's Blues" loses his daughter to the effects of polio, his loss causes him to feel that he can better understand Sonny's troubles. Later, he gains a greater understanding...

The climax of "Sonny's Blues" occurs after Sonny returns to Harlem to live in Greenwich Village, and they have a heated argument. James Baldwin, who composed songs at one time for Ray Charles...

James Baldwin wrote his short story "Sonny's Blues" in a staggered series of flashbacks that jump back and forth in time. The story begins as the narrator finds out that his brother, Sonny, has...

In medias res is a Latin phrase meaning “into the middle of things.” This is an important literary tactic employed by many writers. In using in medias res, writers bypass the exposition and...

The flashbacks are an important and effective technique in this story because they enable the narrator to convey to his readers important snippets of Sonny's life that help us to empathize with...

The narrator's relationship with his younger brother Sonny definitely changes over the course of their lives. At the beginning of the story, Sonny is in prison, and the narrator learns of this from...

The narrator, Sonny's brother, asks him why he uses heroin. It is hard for this older brother, the upstanding sibling who has made a life for himself as a public school teacher, to understand why...

The street revival is a significant episode in James Baldwin's story entitled "Sonny's Blues" because the brother takes notice of something in Sonny. As the brother looks across the street where a...

First, it's important to define exactly what a climax is and how it functions in a story. A climax occurs when the conflict hits its highest point, and it becomes clear how the story will be...

With the brother of Sonny as narrator, Baldwin affords the reader not only insight into the character of the narrator, but also insight into the character of Sonny as together they unite in their...

I noticed that theme is often confused with and stated as a topic, example: family relationships. Theme is not a topic, theme is what the author wants you to think about or to understand. It is...

The narrator of the story, Sonny's brother, who is seven years older than Sonny, struggles with many internal conflicts. The first conflict concerns the theme of the loss of innocence. At the onset...

To borrow a phrase from our modern society: It's complicated. The narrator does have his brother's best interests at heart. He wants to see Sonny do well and be happy—and he thinks that he, as the...

Sonny’s Blues in chronological plot order: Sonny’s dad’s brother is run over by a car of white men long before his sons are born, and it can be inferred that this trauma is at the root of his...

Literary elements are those basic components that form a literary narrative such as a short story or a novel. While there is no fixed, or standardized, list of these elements, the following are...

Mama tells the narrator about his uncle because she wants him to know "It ain't only the bad ones, nor yet the dumb ones that gets sucked under" in their environment. She tells of the...

The flashback scene in which the narrator's mother reveals the story of his uncle's death occurs at a pivotal point in the story. The narrator's father has just died, and the narrator is forced to...

A key theme to Baldwin's literature is the way that art is shown to be able to either alleviate people's suffering or to save them from it altogether. An important part of this story is the way...

Sonny is the main character in this story, which is told by his older brother, who is saddened when Sonny is jailed after being busted for drug possession. The "Sonny" in the title therefore...

The narrator and his brother Sonny have had a strained relationship for a long time. While Sonny was in high school (the narrator is 7 years older), the brothers lost their mother soon after losing...

There is an old adage that states, "Happiness was born a twin"; indeed, one must share with others his/her joyful state for that emotion to be fully realized. By the same token, sorrow must be...

Instead of organizing his recollections in chronological order, the narrator in "Sonny's Blues" focuses on the ways his relationship with his brother has evolved with time—and not always...

After Sonny's brother reads in the paper about Sonny's arrest, and an old friend of Sonny's meets him in the school parking lot, he is reminded of how he has given up; how he made a promise to...

In the short story "Sonny's Blues" by Baldwin, the author uses an interesting narrative technique in the work that is very effective. This technique involves jumping forwards and backwards in time...

The brothers in "Sonny's Blues" eventually reconcile, as seen in the story's final scene in the jazz club. Sonny's brother, the narrator, is the more practical of the two brothers. He marries,...

Baldwin's story is told in the first person, by Sonny's brother. Because of the point of view, the information we have about Sonny and his family is limited by what the narrator tells us. For...

To the narrator, jazz music is entwined with an image of Sonny that is wrapped up in drugs and making poor decisions. Just after their mother's death, Sonny confides in his brother that he really...

While Sonny is with Isabel's family, he certainly does take advantage of the opportunity to practice on the piano and listen to music. This becomes his life. The narrator adds that Sonny is not...

Sonny is blue about life and being outcast. In this sense, "blue" means sad, unhappy, despondent. Sonny is also a musician and when he plays, he plays African American invented music, bebop jazz...

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...

In terms of scotch and milk being mixed, scotch is a drink associated with adulthood, and therefore with knowledge. On the other hand, and ambiguously, scotch (and other narcotics, like Sonny's...

The traditional exposition would consist of the narrator's childhood and his attempts to take care of Sonny. The reader would walk through the difficult and loving moments of the narrator's...

A flashback occurs when the narrator deviates from the main timeframe of the narrative in order to recall something which happened much earlier. Given that "Sonny's Blues" dwells on the narrator's...

By the end of “Sonny’s Blues,” Sonny, a troubled person who is usually very quiet and private, opens up to the narrator, his older brother, about his drug addiction, his passion for music, and his...

In the beginning of the story the narrator thinks about the way he has compartmentalized the pain and fear he feels regarding his brother Sonny. He reads about Sonny's arrest in a drug raid and is...

It seems that the primary form of conflict in James Baldwin's short story "Sonny's Blues" is man vs. man, but there are others as well. There are several types of conflict. They are: man vs. man...

Because James Baldwin’s story “Sonny’s Blues” is not primarily about conflict between people, one cannot identify a human antagonist. The first-person narrator, who is the protagonist, tends to see...

The tragic death of his daughter has brought the narrator tremendous grief, and having experienced this grief, he can better sympathize with his brother Sonny. As he recalls his father's pride in...

In James Baldwin's "Sonny's Blues," I don't know if we can be certain of what the "void" is, but we can speculate, as we might with any kind of art: narratives, poems, music, paintings, etc. My...

While the title, "Sonny's Blues" would seem to indicate that the story's main character is Sonny, interestingly the greatest change comes in the character of the narrator, Sonny's brother. And,...

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...

Sonny and his brother, the narrator of the story, are similar in that they both want to escape from Harlem, the neighborhood in which they grew up. The narrator escapes Harlem through marriage and...

Sonny is a sympathetic character, because his negative behavior can be explained by the pain and isolation he feels. Sonny has many bad traits. He's often been the bane of his more stable, steady...

In James Baldwin's short story about two brothers who finally come to understand one another through the medium of music, the brother who is the narrator is a round character. That is, he is a...

By plunging us straight into the middle of the action, Baldwin is giving us an immediate sense of the importance that the narrator attaches to his relationship with Sonny. As the story begins, the...

The narrator works as a math teacher. It is a quite well-paid, respectable job that provides him and his family with a good standard of living, certainly by comparison with most people in the...

The narrator is estranged from his brother in the beginning of the story, unable to relate to the decisions Sonny has made as he's grown into adulthood. He recalls that when Sonny was the age of...

In the nightclub, the narrator has several epiphanies about his brother and their relationship by watching him play. The first epiphany is that music is Sonny's voice in the world. He has the...

James Baldwin's "Sonny's Blues" was published in 1957, three years after the Supreme Court decision of Brown v. Board of Education; however, it was not really until the Civil Rights Act of 1960...