James Baldwin was born in Harlem in 1924. He never knew his father and never had the opportunity to meet him. Soon after his birth his mother marries David Baldwin, a factory worker and Pentecostal minister, whose name James accepts as his surname. The future writer lives in a house with seven younger half-brothers and-sisters. James had a bad relation with his stepfather. This fact had big influence on his childhood and he turned to reading as a means of escape.(Africana.com) After his high school graduation in1942, Baldwin moves to New Jersey where he takes a series of odd jobs. But after his stepfather’s death and when the Harlem riots occur he moves back to New York and settles down in Greenwich Village. During the next winter James meets the celebrated black writer Richard Wright, who later becomes a mentor and father figure to him, and who recommends him for the Eugene Saxton Fellowship that he receives later in 1945.
In 1948 Baldwin gets awarded a Rosenwald Fellowship, and uses the prize money for a one-way ticket to Paris. He leaves New York on November 11, 1948.(Africana.com) “We are responsible for the world in which we find ourselves, if only because we are the only sentient force which can change it.” The story is about the life of a boy called Sonny who unfortunately fell in the trap of the drug called Heroin. The story starts with the news that his brother sees in the paper about an arrest done to his brother considered with the same substance. Till this moment of his life Sonny’s brother did not know about his baby brother’s habit. James Baldwin shows to the readers how the lives of a drug addict and the people around him look like. He brings the little facts of the reality in a very simple way. The combination between the characters in the story and the problems that are surrounding them were chosen very carefully by Baldwin, in order to represent heroin addiction. This is not Sonny’s sad story. It is every drug addict’s story.
The Homework on Confessions of a Real Life Drug User
I am a heavy drug user. The drug I use is PCP (Phencyclidine). The type of drug is a Hallucinogen. I got the drug from Nile a.k.a. Robert Black. Nile is a man who sells drugs to support his family. He is only 23 years of age. I met Nile 4 months ago at the corner liquor store. PCP is a synthetic drug (chemically unrelated to LSD or mescaline); PCP is a white crystalline powder, readily soluble in ...
The story starts at the moment where Sonny’s brother reads in the newspaper about his brother’s arrest, where he is convicted with drug abuse. Till this moment of his life that person did not even imagined that his brother had anything to do with heroin. He remembers about the old times and starts to realize that his brother’s behavior was exactly like the one of an addict. He starts realizing that the surrounding problems brought his brother to the level where he lived right now. His dad died when Sonny was still a kid and his mom passed out when Sonny was still in high school. They both grew up in Harlem.
The thing is that Sonny’s brother had always that one-lined way of thinking where he just cares for making a family and settle down his own life. When his dad died he a leaf home to go to the navy and doesn’t sees Sonny anymore till his mom’s funeral. When he meets him the whole conversation is a big scandal because of the difference in the way of thinking that both brothers have. We can see again the limited aspects in Sonny’s brother when he rejects Sonny’s idea and will to be a musician in the future. His behavior is absolutely ignorant. It is typical for drug addicts that they quit their conversation with people who don’t follow their thoughts and don’t understand their ideas and views. So of course the dialog between them just stops with the words of Sonny that he wants to leave the place, go somewhere far away. This is the first clue in the conversation that points to some kind of a problem.
He wants to run away and forget about his home. Why? At least his brother did not realize at this moment what the problem is. The overhearing and overseeing of the real situation caused because of the life we live makes us blind in front of the truth when it stays open in front of us. To understand better the situation we should know more about heroin addiction. There are two types of feeling in that habit. It is different experience when the drug is smoked or is shot in the vanes.
The Essay on Considered Normal Sonny Shane Life
Robert Frost's The Road Not Taken, James Baldwin's Sonny's Blues, and Zalman King's In God's Hands, share a common theme of individualism. Every society has certain values and generally accepted ways of living that are considered normal. These principles are what keep societies organized and orderly. Conforming to these principles, however, is not necessarily the road to happiness for every ...
Most of the heroin addicts love shooting not anymore because of the long term feeling they receive but because of the power of the waive that hits them immediately after the drug reaches the brain of the person. The desire for life exists in all the people who fell for that kind of habit.
