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Transcript

Flashback

Allusion

"I read about Sonny's

troubles in the spring.

Little Grace died in the fall.

She was a beautiful little girl.

She died of polio and she

suffered" (Baldwin 14).

"For me, then, as they began

to play again, it glowed and

shook above my brother's

head like the very cup od

trembling" (Baldwin 21).

Allusion

The narrator talks about how he thought that his daughter would be okay, but then she died.

"You mean---like Louis

Armstrong?" (Baldwin 10).

"Bird! Charlie Parker! Don't

they teach you nothing in the

goddamn army" (Baldwin 11).

The narrator refers to his brother ending his life of drugs and starting a new life with music.

Imagery

The narrator is trying to relate to the kind of music his brother likes, however, he doesn't understand any of these things, so Sonny gets angry.

"Your father's brother, being

always kind of frisky, decided to run down this hill, and he did, with that guitar banging and clanging behind him, and he ran across the road" (Baldwin 8).

The narrator's mom tells how his father's brother died, and how it changed his life.

Flashback

"This was the last time I ever

saw my mother alive" (Baldwin 7).

Sonny's Blues Literary Devices

While thinking about his father, the narrator remembers the last conversation he had with his mother.

Flashback

"Safe!' my father grunted,

whenever Mama suggested trying

to move to a neighborhood

which might be safer for children"

(Baldwin 7).

The narrator realizes that his father

hadn't been as bad as he had always

thought. His father wanted a safer neighborhood for his children.

Imagery

Imagery

"So we drove along, between

the green of the park and the stony, lifeless elegance of hotels and apartment buildings, toward the vivid, killing streets of our childhood" (Baldwin 6).

The narrator is comparing his neighborhood to the upper class.

"The juke box was blasting

away with something black and bouncy and I half watched the barmaid. When she smiled one saw the little girl, one sensed the doomed, still-struggling woman beneath the battered face of the semi-whore" (Baldwin 3).

This quote describes the struggle they go through to earn money in this neighborhood.

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