https://uwm.edu/cultures-communities/wp-content/uploads/sites/219/2018/01/SonnysBlues.Baldwin.pdf
For this discussion forum, please answer one (only one!) of the following prompts:
Option #1) “Sonny’s Blues” begins in media res. What does Baldwin achieve by beginning the story this way? In order to answer this question, you’ll need to discuss the story’s opening paragraph (which begins, “I read about it in the paper…”). How did this paragraph affect you as a reader? What information does it give the reader, and what information does it withhold? When the narrator says, “I stared at it in the swinging lights of the subway car, and in the faces and bodies of the people, and in my own face,” what do you think “it” refers to? What is this “it” that he sees in other people and in his own face?
Option #2) The textbook introduce various key terms related to plot, including the term “climax,” which the textbook defines as the moment in the plot of greatest emotional intensity and/or a moment when a certain outcome is decided. Which moment in “Sonny’s Blues” do you think serves as the “climax”? Quote the sentence or sentences that you think make up the story’s climax, and, then, try to make a persuasive argument for why that particular moment should be seen as the climax.
Option #3) Other important terms that the textbook introduces are “conflict” and “resolution.” What do you see as the central “conflict” in “Sonny’s Blues”? You should describe this conflict in your own words, but also include quotations from the story to support your descriiption of the conflict. How does the story “resolve” the conflict? Again, describe the “resolution” using your own words but also quote the story to support the claim you’re making about how the conflict resolves. (You should note that a “resolution” doesn’t necessarily mean there’s a happy ending, but simply that the tension fueling the conflict has somehow been released or modified).
Whichever prompt you decide to answer, your response needs to demonstrate to me that you’ve read the entire story carefully and that you’ve spent time thinking about the story’s deeper meanings.
