Compare And Contrast Sonny's Blues And The Fall Of The House Of Usher

The short stories “Sonny’s Blues” and “The Fall of the House of Usher” seem to have very little in common. However, they do share a struggle with the main character in each story. The protagonist in each story, is a suffering musician, dealing with mental health. Although each story takes place in a different time, both musicians manage to find solace in their music. Both stories here are showing issues of mental illness, as well as environmental effects. Religion and imprisonment also plays a large roll for both Sonny and Roderick. The setting of each story, is used to expose characteristics of the main characters. In each story both Sonny and Roderick become a product of their environment. For Roderick, his “entire family lay in the direct line of descent.” This perhaps the reason he was unable to know the difference between fantasy and reality, to distinguish the unsettling truth of what his family was, and what they represented. As for Sonny, his demise came more from the setting outside his home. Growing up in Harlem, Sonny was a troubled young man exposed to the darkness around him at an early …show more content…
Edgar Allen Poe. To understand the darkness in these stories, I had to relate it to something known. Now I am able to look back and better understand the falling of many artists today. Although these are fiction short stories set to entertain, it is an eye opener of the mental health issues of people like Elvis Presley, Michael Jackson, Whitney Houston, and Amy Winehouse, just to name a few. The battle, the drugs, the emotion in their music, and the pain in their voice, all seems familiar after looking so closely at these two stories. To know anyone bipolar, or addicted to drugs, these stories, although dark, are yet easily relatable. I am thankful to be able to see and appreciate these stories in a new