Tuesday, July 12, 2011

What is the conflict in James Baldwin's story "Sonny's Blues" that troubles a major character?

athenaia86
There are
a lot of conflicts at work in "." The overarching conflict in the story is that
between black existence and white society, and this has strongly influenced how the narrator
views the world. He describes the struggle of growing up in Harlem, where many succumb to drug
use, and many never escape. He has dedicated himself to teaching because he believes this is the
only way to overcome the difficulty of being black in the sort of white world where a black man
can be murdered with few repercussions. The speaker describes how badly affected his father was
by his brother's murder, and this has reverberated down to the narrator as well.
The conflict between the narrator and Sonny, then, derives
from the fact that they negotiate their black existences very differently. Sonny has chosen to
devote himself to music, which the narrator does not understand. He is also critical of Sonny's
drug use, which he thinks is symptomatic of the people he associates with in the music...]]>

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