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This image is of two men having a talk. The men seem to know each other but have a strained relationship, and their conversation seems serious. I feel as though this image mirrors the conversations Sonny and the narrator share. This visual further illustrates how strained the relationship of relatives can be.

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This image enhances my viewpoint of “Sonny’s Blues” because the image depicts the passion of a musician. In the image, it is implied that the musician is fervently playing the piano, this is implied by the keys flying off the piano. It illustrates how musicians are quite serious about their work, which provides me with a better understanding for why Sonny was passionate about his goal to become a musician. His passion for his goal also explains why Sonny was so offended when the narrator did not support him.

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This image is of white police officers detaining an African American man in Harlem in the 1940s. This image provides a greater understanding of the conditions of Harlem when the story was set. It also provides an insight of how African Americans were treated, which was another hardship the narrator and his brother faced.

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Scholarly Physical Source from the LIbrary

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Scholarly Physical Source from the LIbrary

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“Baldwin’s purpose was hardly to to write advertisements for himself, though his example enabled his white peers...to write more explicitly out of their personal experiences than American writers before them had done. Baldwin rather sought to explore the nexus between his individual experiences and social reality.” (Kaplan, 39).

KAPLAN, CORA, and BILL SCHWARZ, editors. James Baldwin: America and Beyond. University of Michigan Press, 2011. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/10.3998/mpub.1168369.

After reading Kaplan’s book, James Baldwin: America and Beyond, it is clear that Baldwin is an influencer of many authors. He has motivated more explicit texts that share personal experiences. If Kaplans discovery of Baldwin’s writing is compared to “Sonny’s Blues”, it is quite evident that Baldwin has incorporated his own experiences in relation to drugs, racism, and growing up as an African American.

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Scholarly Online Source from Library Database

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Scholarly Online Source from Library Database

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“Baldwins own nature, too, seems like that of a blues: he honestly looks at the horribleness of a situation, but he does not give up. Accordingly, the “message” of Baldwin’s various works is, foremost, how blacks can survive in a racist America.” (Mosher).

Mosher, Marlene. “JAMES BALDWIN'S BLUES.” CLA Journal, vol. 26, no. 1, 1982, pp. 112–124. JSTOR, JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/44329456.

This connects to my reading and understanding of “Sonny’s Blues” due to the fact that it gives a background of Baldwin’s motive behind writing. After reading Mosher’s article and comparing his opinions with Baldwin’s writing, it is evident that personal experience has inspired “Sonny’s Blues”. Although his activist motives are somewhat subtle, Baldwin incorporates the corrupt ways of the United States and racism in that time period.