James Baldwin’s story Sonny’s Blue has a repeating motif and theme symbolizing lightness and darkness. The author uses lightness and darkness as a metaphor to symbolize connections in our everyday life. I disagree with Michael Clark who suggests Baldwin uses all the metaphors to support childhood in the story. The author makes numerous connections with the motif to not only represent childhood, but also every stage of life. Baldwin uses the repeating metaphor of lightness and darkness to represent good and evil, adulthood, and relationships between family members. Baldwin uses lightness and darkness in his story to display the good and evil present in the world. Lightness represents day, whereas darkness signifies night. The light we see
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In life we start out as a bright little light. As time goes on, and we get older and older, our light starts to dim. The more mature we get as individuals, and the more experiences and lessons we learn from and overcome we grow. The more experience and wisdom we gain dims our light and turns into darkness. It is not a negative aspect to no longer be in the lightness portion of life anymore. Darkness symbolizes you growing and understanding more about life and yourself. Sonny and the narrator in this story are past the lightness in their lives. The characters may be in the darkness but are still learning lessons about themselves and one another every day they are …show more content…
The narrator realizes he needs to look out for his family. His mother included but specifically his younger brother. Throughout the rest of the story, you see the narrator making a change in himself in order to help his brother. The narrator tries to control how Sonny is going to live and where he is going to live. The narrator tries to not be controlling but in the story we see his controlling, older brother side come out. “We already decided that you was going to go and live at Isabel’s. Now what’s got into you all of a sudden” (87). The narrator controls what Sonny does. Sonny puts up with it at first, but soon disregards and disobeys what he his older brother says to do. Sonny starts to say he is going to school but really he starts skipping to work and focus on his
In life we start out as a bright little light. As time goes on, and we get older and older, our light starts to dim. The more mature we get as individuals, and the more experiences and lessons we learn from and overcome we grow. The more experience and wisdom we gain dims our light and turns into darkness. It is not a negative aspect to no longer be in the lightness portion of life anymore. Darkness symbolizes you growing and understanding more about life and yourself. Sonny and the narrator in this story are past the lightness in their lives. The characters may be in the darkness but are still learning lessons about themselves and one another every day they are …show more content…
The narrator realizes he needs to look out for his family. His mother included but specifically his younger brother. Throughout the rest of the story, you see the narrator making a change in himself in order to help his brother. The narrator tries to control how Sonny is going to live and where he is going to live. The narrator tries to not be controlling but in the story we see his controlling, older brother side come out. “We already decided that you was going to go and live at Isabel’s. Now what’s got into you all of a sudden” (87). The narrator controls what Sonny does. Sonny puts up with it at first, but soon disregards and disobeys what he his older brother says to do. Sonny starts to say he is going to school but really he starts skipping to work and focus on his