Sonny's Blues: Character
When thinking about stories, whether long, short, novels, in general, one would want to know who the characters are and what roles they play within the story. He or she notes the main characters' names, what they do, who they are, their attitudes, traits, etc., and see if sub-characters play an integral part for the main characters or the story itself as a whole. James Baldwin's "Sonny's Blues" contains its own cast of main characters, two of them to be precise. The story is told in a first person point-of-view, meaning the one narrating the story is participating in it. The strange thing is the narrator is not named, or rather, his name is not mentioned at all. He has a younger brother named Sonny, and both of them are the main characters in "Sonny's Blues". Their personalities, traits, and beliefs are different, yet they share a few similar attitudes, and very interesting to boot, making this story very interesting itself. The narrator is one of the major characters of story, not some minor character sitting in the sidelines telling what is going on. Although his personalities and traits are not elaborately explained, the readers know what he is like due to the way he acts to certain situations and towards his brother.
He is pretty much a static character, because he sticks with the attitude of wanting his brother to get a good education, lead a good life, and all things that are the "right things". The narrator is an algebra teacher in a high school and is serious and hard-working, making him seem like a rather successful man, but that doesn't mean he is happy. He might be successful, but he is actually miserable in the inside. He and Sonny's mother and father died a couple of years ago, and his 2-year-old daughter, Grace, died recently (par. 173). Furthermore, now that he has to take care of Sonny, Sonny does not want to listen to him and just wants to be whatever he wants and do whatever he wants to do. To make matters worse, he got busted for heroin and even imprisoned, so his older brother couldn't be all too proud of him. The narrator is not a stock character either, meaning he is not like big-name, well-known heroes in numerous other stories, or a poor man down on his luck but some how gets rich in the end. He is more of a struggling simple man with a life that is not going the way he wanted, and that doesn't change much towards the end. Sonny is very much different from his brother, but they both a similar attitude they can relate too. He is also a static character because he sticks with the notion of becoming a great jazz musician someday, like Louis Armstrong and Charlie Parker (par. 124 - 131). Sonny is about the same age as the boys in his brother's math class, so having a dream li
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Approximate Word count = 1011
Approximate Pages = 4 (250 words per page double spaced)
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