James Baldwin was a well known African American writer as well as a Social and Civil Rights Activist, as a result his works represented not only a personal aspect but also historical expression. Some of his stories were based during the struggle of identity in the African American communities as well as the fight against the predestined assumptions of racial hierarchy in America. In the story, “Sonny’s Blues”, We follow two brothers set in post World War II Harlem and how their lives take two different turns in which they find the struggle of not only of finding their own identity but the identity to each other and their community. James Baldwin uses three main literary tools of Setting, Point of View and Metaphor to demonstrate how these tools
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These streets hadn’t changed, though housing projects jutted up out of them now like rocks in the middle of a boiling sea.” (Baldwin, 129) through these few words we can begin to picture the setting of this story that shows after the War, Where African American men fought equally side by side with the white men came back home and found themselves suck into a community that would either consume them or struggle for an essence of progress. This representation plays an important role in the lives of the narrator as well as to Sonny, where Sonny’s brother became a teacher after returning from the war and while Sonny, “is a young Negro caught… between the degradations, the slumminess of Harlem,” ( Klein, 32) that lead him to a life of addiction that Marcus Klein has stated the Negro Community had offered him Heroin. These words strongly show how the downfall of the community has resulted into causing turmoil to Sonny because as the image of a rocks in a boiling sea, there is no outlet or escape to the dreaded surrounding that you have been deeply-seated into. We begin to also see the setting itself become a character which in this story, it is a villain, “I’d had know this avenue all my life, but it seemed to me again, as it had seemed on the day I’d heard about Sonny’s trouble, filled with hidden menace which was its very breath of life.” (Baldwin, 129). Throughout this story, James Baldwin method of writing Harlem as a character helps build the world where we see how a community begins to shape the person to who they will become. For instance with Sonny’s brother, We begin to learn as well as himself begin to learn how he keeps not only his community but his heritage at arm’s length that begins to crash down around him with the news of his
These streets hadn’t changed, though housing projects jutted up out of them now like rocks in the middle of a boiling sea.” (Baldwin, 129) through these few words we can begin to picture the setting of this story that shows after the War, Where African American men fought equally side by side with the white men came back home and found themselves suck into a community that would either consume them or struggle for an essence of progress. This representation plays an important role in the lives of the narrator as well as to Sonny, where Sonny’s brother became a teacher after returning from the war and while Sonny, “is a young Negro caught… between the degradations, the slumminess of Harlem,” ( Klein, 32) that lead him to a life of addiction that Marcus Klein has stated the Negro Community had offered him Heroin. These words strongly show how the downfall of the community has resulted into causing turmoil to Sonny because as the image of a rocks in a boiling sea, there is no outlet or escape to the dreaded surrounding that you have been deeply-seated into. We begin to also see the setting itself become a character which in this story, it is a villain, “I’d had know this avenue all my life, but it seemed to me again, as it had seemed on the day I’d heard about Sonny’s trouble, filled with hidden menace which was its very breath of life.” (Baldwin, 129). Throughout this story, James Baldwin method of writing Harlem as a character helps build the world where we see how a community begins to shape the person to who they will become. For instance with Sonny’s brother, We begin to learn as well as himself begin to learn how he keeps not only his community but his heritage at arm’s length that begins to crash down around him with the news of his