Sunny by Jason Reynolds by Stella Polder

Puzzles of His mom

polderstella — 2024-03-01 16:52:21 UTC

The puzzles of his mom symbolizes his way to see his mom. On pages 52-53 Reynolds writes, "Darryl had taken so many pictures of her, and them, almost like he wanted us to have enough images to piece together the rest of our lives." This shows that both the dad and Sunny miss Sunny's mom very much.

Breathing

polderstella — 2024-03-04 17:12:59 UTC

Breathing represents Sunny’s struggles to communicate with his father, as well as his anxiety from the childhood trauma he lives through. Sunny introduces breathing at the beginning of the text. At his track meet, Sunny explains that he often hears his father yelling at him from the stands, telling him to remember to breathe, which Sunny writes actually has the opposite effect on him: “Then I immediately start thinking about what breathing sounds like. I can never really find it. Then I start thinking about what not breathing sounds like” (Reynolds 9). Darryl puts enormous pressure on Sunny to succeed in running, and this pressure truly affects Sunny’s anxiety and difficulty breathing.

Person vs. Person

polderstella — 2024-03-04 19:30:46 UTC

Sunny has conflict with his dad about his mother and track. He struggles with his strained relationship with his father about losing his mom and not running anymore. His father also ignores him and makes Sunny call him Darryl.

Person vs. Guilt

polderstella — 2024-03-04 19:34:57 UTC

Sunny feels guilty for his mother's death because she died giving birth to him. He especially feels guilty for quitting track because his mom was a runner and he feels as if he has to run for her even though he doesn't enjoy running.

Sunny Lancaster wanted to stop running and dance instead. However, because Sunny's mom was a runner, it caused him to feel like he had to run because he thinks he is the reason of his mother's death. He then confronts his father and Coach that he doesn't want to run anymore because it is boring. Then, when he tells Coach, Coach offers him a chance to try discus. Sunny then finally realizes that he likes discus because it is like dancing even though his dad is not a fan of it.

polderstella — 2024-03-05 15:12:52 UTC

Text-to-Self

polderstella — 2024-03-05 15:26:32 UTC

I can relate to the text because at track practice I am like Sunny who does the field events instead of track events. Sunny's friends and my friends do track events like relays and running a certain amount of meters. It can be really hard to be left out at track because my friends would always talk about their relays and it hurts me because I really wanted to be in a relay like how Sunny feels left out because his friends only talk to "runners" now.

Aurelia's tattoos

polderstella — 2024-03-17 16:46:40 UTC

Aurelia's star tattoos symbolizes finding life after being lost. Each year Aurelia would celebrate that she is not longer lost, like she was when she was younger, by getting a different color star tattoo. This is shown when Jason Reynolds writes, "After Aurelia's first year clean, she and my mother got really, really bad star tattoos as a way to celebrate. And Aurelia kept doing it every year after. Tattoo after tattoo. Star after star," (Reynolds).

Lesson Learned

polderstella — 2024-03-17 21:51:34 UTC

Sunny learns that he should just stand out in front of people and not be afraid be different. He also learns to do what he loves by not being embarrassed and that he should stop holding on to things from the past.

Quote

polderstella — 2024-03-17 21:59:08 UTC

“When I was a little kid and was all yelly-yelly and Darryl wanted me to be more hushy-hushy, he gave me you and told me to put the noise on your pages whenever I felt like I needed to, which was all the time except for when I was running or sleeping" (Reynolds 3).