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Sonny's Blues Literary Analysis Essay

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Sonny's Blues Literary Analysis Essay
Gracie Ferraco
English 114- section 03
Schwartz
March 14, 2013

Prompt # 2, Essay # 3 In Sonny’s Blues the theme, symbols, characters, and motifs all combine together to create a literary masterpiece that describes the importance of unity amongst family and the turbulent life of African-Americans living in Harlem, New York in the 1950’s. This story is written in a chronological thought process of experiences the narrator has seen while growing up and the memories of his family, mostly of his brother Sonny. The story is about Sonny’s journey, told and seen through the eyes of the narrator. The narrator, who remains unnamed, is a black man teaching algebra in Harlem and Sonny, his younger brother, is a blues pianist struggling …show more content…
Math is the type of subject where there is always one correct answer for a problem; this is the type of demeanor that the narrator has. After reading a newspaper article about how his brother was arrested for drug use and loitering, he searches and wonders what is going to happen next with Sonny. The narrator asks about what would happen to his brother several times, “What’s going to happen to him now?” (Baldwin. 602) This ties into the theme of brotherly love because the narrator is expressing concern for his nomadic brother and hopes for an answer to be …show more content…
Looking at the housing project, it creates a great imprisonment of the idea that never worked. The project shows a symbol of how Harlem has been imprisoned by its own decline and fall. This is because it was a noble project that was out to provide affordable housing, but people like drug dealers, moved in to the projects, causing awful conditions for living. For Sonny these conditions are what lead him astray. When going back to the housing projects with Sonny, the narrator, notices the tension between Sonny and the projects, “the moment Sonny and I started into the house I had the feeling that I was simply bringing him back into the danger he had almost died trying to escape.” (Baldwin. 605) Understanding that these conditions can hinder the way a person is brought up, family must stick together and support one another, when the narrator noticed the uneasiness that Sonny was exuding the readers can portray this as a rising arc in the relationship between the
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