Sonny’s Blues essay

Sonny’s Blues By James Baldwin Sonny’s Blues the author is presenting the past from the perspective of the present in order to understand his own feelings concerning the role of a father. The two brothers in the story had different life choices. Both Sonny and the narrator have found their own mode of escaping the violence and harshness of the ghetto, different though those modes might be. After the death of the mother …

…our experiences with one another, freeing ourselves from one who causes the trembling. It was once said that the only thing we learn from history is that we do not learn; it is because we do not listen, or learn from one another. Sonny made his own history through his music. In short, life has written us the words of a song. We choose the tempo, the key and style we choose to play it.