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Comparing Sonny's Blues And How It Feels To Be Colored Me

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Baldwin 's "Sonny 's Blues" and Hurston 's “How it feels to be Colored Me" both take a captivating look at how jazz music portrays such an important role in the lives of these characters and their journey through unyielding times of change. In this essay, I will be dissecting the lives of Sonny from “Sonny’s Blues” and Zora from “How it feels to be Colored Me” and the significance that jazz music has played in each of their lives. James Baldwin 's "Sonny 's Blues" begins with the narrator on the subway reading his brother 's name, Sonny, splashed across the morning paper. It had been heroin that got Sonny arrested. Throughout sequins of cascading events, the narrator and his brother Sonny will reveal the differences between the two of them. …show more content…

who was not [related to] an Indian Chief " (Hurston pg. 1060). Throughout the story Zora is reluctant to tell her readers that she is neither ashamed nor does she feel "tragically colored" (Hurston pg.1060), even when Zora was "thrown against a sharp white background" (Hurston pg.1061) during her time spent at Jacksonville, nor was she filled with anger or sorrow for herself, she had never felt the pressure of discrimination to climb back to a time when her ancestors would have been angry towards a white man. However, during a night spent at a jazz restaurant accompanied by her a white friend, Zora would come to find out just how different she was; and as the night lingered on a group of jazz musicians began to play which in turn woke a "primitive fury"(Hurston pg.1061) within Zora. From there Zora takes the readers on an emotional turbulence through the jungle which was led by the rhythm of the jazz musicians. After the music had finished and Zora had sunk slowly back into her chair, back into reality she discovered that her white friend sitting across from her composed and collected had felt

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