Essays on Blues

In this assignment I will be comparing the poems Remember by Christina Rossetti and the poem Funeral blues by WH Auden. I will show some intensive points of comparison in the form, structure and language used and how both poems deal with love, tranquillity, peace and death. Both poems are about the feelings of love…

In Sonny’s Blues by James Baldwin, two brothers grow up in the ghetto of Harlem, a poverty-stricken place where heroin use is common and crime is high. Sonny, the younger of the two, is portrayed as a troubled young adult who desperately tries to get out of the negative environment that threatens to destroy his…

The setting of “Sonny’s Blues” is in post-World War II New York during a significant cultural and political revolution that had a lasting impact on the country. New York became a fresh cultural hub attracting artists from various parts of the world. Greenwich Village, where Sonny briefly resides, was at the center of this cultural…

Both the poems are based at periods of War, but the difference being is that ‘Dulce Et Decorum Est’ depicts the very physical suffering of the soldiers in the muddy, bloody trenches of the First World War, (The Great War), and is written for the purpose of educating those on the home front, who are…

Sonny’s Blues starts off by non informing the reader much about the characters which will be presented in the narrative. However, the writer does hold an interesting manner of get downing the narrative, for after reading the first two opening lines. I read it in the paper, in the metro, on my manner to work….

Gerri Strumpf’s essay, “A required course in Beating the Freshmen Blues,” discusses the challenges that freshmen face in overcoming the anxieties of college. The essay highlights the fact that many freshmen do not successfully complete their college journey and ultimately graduate. The author further explains how these challenges can be overcome by providing support to…

            To be blue refers to a mood of being sad or depressed. The blues in music and poetry are reinterpretations of this mood by musicians and writers into an art form. Baldwin and Hooker are right when they declare that the blues are universal in that the mood or the emotion of melancholy is…

In “Sonny’s Blues” by James Baldwin, the theme is based on the evolution of two suppressed brothers. The story is written in 1957 and shows how two black brothers struggle to be brothers or understand one another. The narrator is the older brother, and an accomplished algebra teacher. The younger brother is Sonny, a heroin…

In the poem “Funeral Blues,” W.H. Auden’s choice of diction allows the reader a greater understanding of the intensity and depth of feeling experienced upon the loss of a loved one. Likewise, the symbolism used by the poet pulls us into the actual world of the grief stricken as he searches for ways to mourn…

James Baldwin’s short story “Sonny’s Blues” highlights the struggle because community involvement and individual identity. Baldwin’s “leading theme – the discovery of identity – is nowhere presented more successfully than in the short story ‘Sonny’s Blues” (Reilly 56). Individuals breeds isolation and even persecution by the collective, dominant community. This conflict is illustrated in three…