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Essay / Research Paper Abstract
An 8 page essay that discusses these themes in James Baldwin's short story "Sonny's Blues." Bibliography lists 5 sources.
Page Count:
8 pages (~225 words per page)
File: KL9_khsonbl4.rtf
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Unformatted sample text from the term paper:
painful quest for an identity" (Murray 354). This imagery works on multiple levels. It metaphorically describes Sonnys descent into heroin addiction, which results in a prison sentence, which is the
dark societal perception of the evils of heroin addiction. However, on another level, Baldwin also uses this imagery to argue that Sonnys addiction is a reaction to the dark
factors in society, and that heroin momentarily releases from the prison these forces create and into the light of feeling great (Baldwin 412). Baldwin also uses this imagery to explore
the inner life of the narrator, the brother who chose professional success as his antidote to the same societal forces that drove Sonny to addiction. The narrator, in
the beginning of the story, retreats from the painful images of destitute people, particularly a boy in the shadow of a doorway who reminds him of his brother, by descending
into the darkness of subway. He "retreats from the light, however dim" (Murray 354). In Baldwins description of the relief offered to ghetto dwellers by going to the movies, Baldwin
describes this in terms of two darknesses, "the darkness of their lives...and the darkness of the movies, which had blinded them to that other darkness" (Baldwin 410). The narrator considers
young blacks and how they were "growing up with a rush...their heads bumped abruptly against the low ceiling of their actual possibilities" (Baldwin 410). As this indicates, Baldwin sets
the stage for his tale of two brothers by using light and dark imagery to explain the sociological reality of 1950s life for blacks in America, with its status quo
of institutionalized, legal racism. In movies, blacks saw the possibilities of the American dream, sitting in the dark, watching the lighted screen. They were allowed to see these possibilities, but
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