Need Help with Sonny's Blues

Running Head: Sonny's Blues

James Baldwin: Sonny's Blues

Daisy White

South University Online

Composition III/Literature ENG1300 S01

Week 4 Assignment 2

Susan Antlitz Tools:

August 3, 2015

Sonny's Blues

Sonny's Blues written by James Baldwin in 1957, takes place in Harlem, New York. The setting is particularly rigourous yet its significant, since it's part of the reason the central character utilize and illicits heroin to avoid his feelings of an unjust life in Harlem. The setting allows the reader to depict the character's struggles and entrapment of life,''The darkness outside is what the old folks have been talking about. It’s what they’ve come from. It’s what they endure. The child knows that they won’t talk any more because if he knows too much about what’s happened to them, he’ll know too much too soon, about what’s going to happen to him”(anottation). More importantly the setting gives valadation to the experience the characters have encounter, because even though each character sustains some kind of unhappiness, it's Sonny who catches the blues, so bad he succumbs to the darkness that the old folks talked about.

Although Sonny is the central character, his stuggles and mishaps are being told by the narrator, whom is brother. Having his brother as the narrator gives the reader insight of their lives together, and their perception of one another. As a young child the narrator implies that Sonny as always been a good boy. “He hadn’t ever turned hard or evil or disrespectful, the way kids can, so quick, so quick, especially in Harlem” believing that his brother, Sonny would never be a stastic of Harlem improverishment(annotation). The narrartor then compares his naiveness of his brother in reflection of his students, possibly knowing while he's talking algebra, one of students is the epitome of Sonny , a young boy who opresses to the poverty, and limited opurtunities of Harlem, only to become a herion addict. However it's the narrator who eludes Harlem darkness and dangerous side. He's become an a noble man. He's a husband, father, and teacher. He has worked hard to obtained his middle class success, yet his emotions are absent, when talking about Sonny, “I’d ever see my brother going down, coming to nothing, all that light in his face gone out, in the condition I’d already seen so many others”(annotation). His tone is spoken as if he's failed too, despite exhibition of the American Dream.

Before death the narrator's mother obliged him to be his brother keeper, “You got to hold on to your brother,” she said, “and don’t let him fall, no matter what it looks like is happening to him and no matter how evil you gets with him,” but he doesn't keep his promise becoming astray from Sonny

Sonny's Blues