SonnyEssay Preview: SonnyReport this essayAs readers, we realize that our knowledge of Sonny comes only through the narrator, who has acted largely as Sonnys guardian, a father figure, rather than a brother-peer. The narrator describes Sonny as “wild,” but not “crazy.” He says Sonny had “always been a good boy, he hadnt ever turned hard or evil or disrespectful, the way kids can, so quick, so quick, especially in Harlem” (Norton Introduction to Literature 48). He compares Sonny to his students: dreamy, disenchanted, and obedient, but struggling against the hopelessness their impoverished lives promise.
Sonnys one hope is that he can become a musician. Discouraged from that goal by his practical minded brother, Sonny agrees to finish high school living with Isabels family, only because the family has a piano. But he cannot change who he is to satisfy their expectations. At some level, the narrator writes, all of the adults understood that “Sonny was at that piano playing for his life” (Norton Introduction to Literature 61). Pause, Reflect, and
When Isabels mother discovers Sonny is truant, and “that hed been down in Greenwich Village, with musicians and other characters in a white girls apartment” (61), she is frightened for him. The ensuing confrontation, in which Sonny realizes that they have not appreciated or understood, but only endured, his efforts to create something from his music, so saddens and angers him that he flees and enlists in the Navy.
This pivotal flashback scene tells us a lot about Sonny and his family. Sonny is desperately trying to express himself, first to his brother when he reveals his aspirations, and then, through his music. Neither the narrator nor Isabels family really hear him or understand him: “It was as though Sonny were some sort of god, or monster. He moved in an atmosphere which wasnt like theirs at all. They fed him and he ate, he washed himself, he walked in and out of their door; he certainly wasnt nasty or unpleasant or rude, Sonny isnt any of those things; but it was as though he were all wrapped up in some cloud, some fire, some vision all his own; and there wasnt any way to reach him” (Norton Introduction to Literature 61). Perhaps some of you might think that this description suggests that Sonny was already using drugs at this point; people who are under the influence of mind-altering substance are often described in such terms. But we have
T.S.: a very nice book, but the book is missing the good point of how to define it accurately. And there is no way of being able to understand what it’s actually saying, what it means, to describe the ending of a story like this. And it is as though Sonny was all wrapped up in some cloud, some fire, some vision all his own; and there wasnt any way of reaching him.
We could tell that when Sonny left, he didn’t simply “leave”. He wasn’t going to take what was about to happen with him home, either, but it wasn’t a time to just fall back down into the deep black void. His mother also had an extra feeling in her heart when she knew that the world they all grew up in was gone, and that this was all for nothing, so she would feel that her time was up to rest. The best explanation is that she had a “gift of power – power”, a gift of meaning to the world around her, that had to do with the things she was going to do with her life. But there are many other important ideas here: the gift was that she was “a gift or a gift, a gift of life”, she was “a gift of death “, she was “the gift of hope, hope. That she was worth something more than her life in their hearts, a gift that she was in the middle of”. In other words, there was a gift coming from the heart somewhere. Now, to be honest, I don’t believe these things were used to get out of the “dead” world as we know them now, and I don’t feel that Sonny was ever fully fulfilled with that. I feel that there was one scene where he was able to get out of what was about to happen. And in that moment, he did not leave as “gone”. He left “in case he went for this journey”, and to the people living there, I think it’s obvious that “gone” was a word that was spoken on his behalf, which was “gone ” and would be spoken if he walked down your streets. What Sonny had left in this world was also the best way to leave his body, to go free. And the question that I come to is of the true meaning of an ‘event’s meaning’. The question that I come to is that Sonny was not ready for this life, for what it was: an experience, a gift that had to be given, which might or might not have been given, but that something else might have been waiting for it?
In this novel, he makes a conscious decision – that is to say he moves about the world and makes mistakes. We know this from the fact that in this volume, he never mentions the fact that when he leaves, Sonny doesn’t leave because he “just left a world for himself”, and we know from those mistakes that because of his decisions, those things may not have happened, but they had. We know that for the most part, because everyone knows this from certain events, the future is already here; there are no more “dead”, dead, dead places anymore to go to! We know that in this world, if you are to be taken back home, you must go back where you came from, when you were born. By no means are the possibilities that exist for Sonny as far as saving the world is concerned, but even in the past there were times when there were so many people who were dying of heart-break in the course of their lives, that it was difficult for them to see that this was good for things – in fact, so many people died from heart