African-American Duality of Identity:
Literary Criticism of the short story "Sonny's Blues" by James Baldwin
James Baldwin's face, with its piercing eyes and craggy forehead, is a frequently depicted image upon anthologies and volumes of African-American literature and criticism, particularly post-colonial criticism that emphasizes the alienated sense of self and national identity frequently experienced by Blacks in America during the 1960's when Baldwin wrote some of his greatest works, including the short story "Sonny's Blues." Baldwin was an African-American, a child of the Southern states of America, a homosexual, and also an expatriate from America. He lived a great deal of his life in France and Turkey and stated that he was happiest living away from America. Yet most of his works attempt to come to grips with the African-American experience.
All of these influences upon the author's identity can be seen in "Sonny's Blues." Most particularly, Baldwin's sense of postmodern alienation as an African-American, a homosexual, and a self-taught intellectual strikes the strongest chord throughout the short story. For all of Baldwin's multiplicities of identity were fundamentally 'other' or alien and estranged from the society in which he dwelt.
Of course, "Sonny's Blues" is a fictional work. James Baldwin's "Sonny's Blues" relates a tale of two brothers. But this sense of duality conveys Baldwin's own sense of inner duality, as an Black intellectual in a community denied full literacy and the expression of literature through the public stage and of a homosexual man in a hyper-masculine subculture of the African-American community of his day. Baldwin did not fit the conventional masculine Black stereotypes of his day in confirmation to ideals of heterosexual desire. The duality of the two brothers, the two main characters, mirrors Baldwin's own duality of inner nature as a Black homosexual man.
According to C.W.E. Bigsby, editor of The Black American Writer, the central point of conflict in much of Baldwin's writing is to show that "the job of ethnic renewal [lies] in individual fulfillment rather than...
James Baldwin's Sonny's Blues applying historcal criticism method. To begin developing thesis, helpful review sections chapter Critical Theory Today list "Some questions…critics literary texts. James Baldwin's 1957 short story "Sonny's Blues" deals with elements in the life of an African-American family during several moments in their lives as they try to cope with the difficult conditions at the beginning of the second half of the twentieth century. Baldwin concentrates on
Sonny's Blues While the tale of how we suffer, and how we are delighted, and how we may triumph is never new, it must always be heard," writes James Baldwin in his short story, Sonny's Blues. "There isn't any other tale to tell, it's the only light we've got in all this darkness." This might be called the theme of Sonny's Blues, and it comes at the end of a long
The following quotation, which appears in an annotated bibliography and is in reference to an article by Susan Robbins entitled "Anguish and Anger" that appeared in the Virginia English Bulletin in 1986, demonstrates this fact. Compares James Joyce's "Araby" and James Baldwin's "Sonny's Blues" in relation to the theme, "Anger and anguish are the fires that burn away innocence…" (59). Sonny gains his freedom from anger and anguish through his
His never-ending desire for Judy Green represents the feeling of sorrow, incompleteness, and pessimism that is often a major staple of later modernist writers in American literature. In this, Fitzgerald shows how not even success in achieving the American Dream can guarantee a happy ending, and in the end suffering is always present even in all rings of American society. Postmodernism was born out of this complex environment. James Baldwin's "Sonny's
Ellison The literary work of Ralph Ellison is among the most studied and the most controversial. In the context of African-American writers Ellison is both revered and despised for the manner in which he wrote (or failed to write) concerning the question of race. His essay "The World and the Jug" written in 1963 explores the important topic of race and the functions of literature. The purpose of this discussion is
Crime and Punishment Ours is an extremely violent kind of world where even the most common type of folk can find themselves faced with types of unspeakable horrors and criminal activity through little or no intention of their own. In American literature, a common theme is the concept of the freedom of choice and how a person's choices come to affect not only themselves, but all of the people around them.
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