Comparing Sonny's Blues, The Rockpile, And The Outing

Throughout James Baldwin’s stories, such as “Sonny’s Blues”, “The Rockpile”, and “The Outing”, he uses classism, racism, sexism, and despair to express hardships throughout his life and others. The life of James Baldwin was very difficult since he lived during the Harlem Renaissance, 1920s. Being born as a gay black man without much money. Being black during the 1920s made you a target of hateful actions and thoughts. While being gay during the 1920s also made you a target for hate, even worse than for being black in some cases. Being poor only made life harder James Baldwin was born in 1924, in Harlem. During the time he was born was the first part of the Harlem Renaissance, from 1920s - 1930s. His work mainly discusses the life of the black man in white white America. Grandson of a

“It is hardly a new perception that James Baldwin’s fiction, indeed all of his work, is spun out of suffering. His characters are to a significant extent defined by their capacity for pain, both their own and that of others. How they handle it is a measure of their endurance, of course, but more subtly of their creativity and their redemptive possibilities - both for self and for their communities” (Lee 92). This proves that despair is a constant in the communities of James Baldwin’s short stories, “The Rockpile”, “The Outing”, and “Sonny’s Blues.” Lee talks about how each character in each story is created from suffering and despair. This despair is what makes the people who they are, the persecution of their race and daily hardships. Baldwin uses the hardships of his life and his community's lives through the characters in his stories. Every man, woman, and child have different challenges in life which create the person they are and who they will be. The cruel time period, 1920s, the people of black communities lived through is what made them the who they