Sonny's Blues Rhetorical Devices

In the short story, Sonny’s Blues, James Baldwin expresses the theme of suffrage and survival within the African American community, and how they can overcome it through the bond of family. In the lengthy flashback, the narrator's mother uses ethos as she reveals an anecdote regarding the death of the father's uncle due to drunk white men behind the wheel. The mother utilizes logos when trying to depict the father's never-ending fury he felt towards white people in connection with the injustice of black crime, the mother quotes, "Till the day he died he weren't sure but that every white man he saw was the man that killed his brother." (Baldwin 42). Moreover, this is relevant because throughout the short story, it is mentioned of Sonny and

The mother affirms grief after conversing about her husband with tears running down her face. In the following quote: “Your father always acted like he was the roughest, strongest man on earth. And everybody took him to be like that. But if he hadn’t had me there to see his tears!” (Baldwin 42), further presents the emotional commitment she dealt with for years. She knew that a family's love for one another is the most resilient strength. Therefore, her husband was able to live through his brother's death and in return, she was his shepherd "I helped your father get safely through this world" (Baldwin 42). Consequently, she can see the similarities between her late husband and her youngest child, how they both carry the weight of their blues onto their shoulders unlike our narrator, who had instead internalized it. She must open the eyes of her eldest son to this tragic narrative of the world, he needs to look out for his fellow black brother, “I guess I didn’t want to believe this. I guess she [the mother] saw this in my face” (Baldwin 42) he quotes. Due to the tragic reality of African Americans, which our narrator's mother uses in the anecdote, she emphasizes that they are always targeted and are more likely to wound up finding their better realities in harmful substances, a reality that our narrator can't accept until later on in life, which will further help him