Close Reading Assignment: Analyzing Selected Lines from “Sonny’s Blues” by James Baldwin
Objective:
This assignment aims to develop your skills in close reading and literary analysis by examining selected lines from James Baldwin’s short story “Sonny’s Blues.” Through this analysis, you will explore themes, imagery, and stylistic elements present in the text.
Instructions:
1. Begin by reading the selected lines carefully, paying attention to the language, imagery, and emotions conveyed.
2. Write a brief summary of the events described in the selected lines. Consider the significance of the narrator’s reaction to Sonny’s performance.
3. Analyze the symbolism of Sonny’s transformation and his interaction with the audience. What do these elements suggest about suffering, art and recovery?
4. Explore the themes of passion, restraint, family bonds, loss and salvation present in the selected lines. How do these themes relate to the broader context of the story?
5. Provide evidence from the text to support your analysis, including quotations and specific examples.
6. Conclude your analysis by reflecting on the deeper implications of the selected lines and their significance within the story as a whole.
Submission Guidelines:
– Your assignment should begin with a thesis statement (underline it) and three supporting paragraphs. You do not need a conclusion.
– Use clear and concise language, and ensure that your analysis is well-organized and coherent.
– Use examples from the text to support your arguments. You may use other places in the story for your examples or you may just use what is provided below.
Selected Text:
“Then they all gathered around Sonny and Sonny played. Every now and again one of them seemed to say, amen. Sonny’s fingers filled the air with life, his life. But that life contained so many others. And Sonny went all the way back, he really began with the spare, flat statement of the opening phrase of the song. Then he began to make it his. It was very beautiful because it wasn’t hurried and it was no longer a lament. I seemed to hear with what burning he had made it his, and what burning we had yet to make it ours, how we could cease lamenting. Freedom lurked around us and I understood, at last, that he could help us to be free if we would listen, that he would never be free until we did. Yet, there was no battle in his face now, I heard what he had gone through, and would continue to go through until he came to rest in earth. He had made it his: that long line, of which we knew only Mama and Daddy. And he was giving it back, as everything must be given back, so that, passing through death, it can live forever. I saw my mother’s face again, and felt, for the first time, how the stones of the road she had walked on must have bruised her feet. I saw the moonlit road where my father’s brother died. And it brought something else back to me, and carried me past it, I saw my little girl again and felt Isabel’s tears again, and I felt my own tears begin to rise. And I was yet aware that this was only a moment, that the world waited outside, as hungry as a tiger, and that trouble stretched above us, longer than the sky.
Then it was over. Creole and Sonny let out their breath, both soaking wet, and grinning.
There was a lot of applause and some of it was real. In the dark, the girl came by and I asked her to take drinks to the bandstand. There was a long pause, while they talked up there in the indigo light and after a while I saw the girl put a Scotch and milk on top of the piano for Sonny. He didn’t seem to notice it, but just before they started playing again, he sipped from it and looked toward me, and nodded. Then he put it back on top of the piano. For me, then, as they began to play again, it glowed and shook above my brother’s head like the very cup of trembling.”
