Analyzing Sonny's Blues
Analysis of "Sonny's Blues" "Sonny's Blues" was written in 1957, but carries a vital social message in our society today of people trying to understand one another and find their identity. "Sonny's Blues" not only states dramatically the motive for Baldwin's famous polemics in the cause of Black Freedom, but it also provides an esthetic linking his work, in all literary genres, with the cultures of the Black ghetto (Reilly 56). To truly understand Baldwin's purpose in writing "Sonny's Blues" about finding your identity, we need to analyze the story by using principles: plotline, point of view, character, setting, tone, style, theme, and imagery. After reading "Sonny's Blues", the first thing to analyze is plotline, which is the basis for every story we have and is what gets us, the reader, to pay attention to minor details in the story. With plotline, there are five areas where the story is separated, which are the introduction, the rising action, the climax, the falling action, and the conclusion. The story, "Sonny's Blues," begins with the exposition that sets the scene, introduces the main characters, tells us what happened before the story opened, and provides any other background information that we, the reader, need in order to understand the events to follow. The story opens with the narrator on a subway in Harlem, reading a newspaper article about a drug raid in which Sonny, his brother, was involved in. At this point, the reader is encompassed with so many questions as to why this is in the beginning of the story and why this is significant besides the fact that the article is about the narrator's brother. Then the story continues with the rising action where we, the reader, watch the unfolding of a dramatic situation where Sonny is involved in some kind of conflict. At this point, the reader learns that the newspaper article is not only about Sonny being involved with the drug raid, but that Sonny is going to jail for a heroine addiction. At this