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What Is The Symbolism In Sonny's Blues

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James Baldwin’s Sonny’s Blues shows a contrast between restriction and opportunity, and failure and salvation. The reader can see struggle through the brother’s relationship and their individual past. Baldwin is showing the reader that through all the struggles of life, there is salvation at the end. The symbolism of windows being barriers is a struggle to break free from where they are. That can be physically breaking free by leaving Harlem or it can be emotionally breaking free by letting go of the past and finding salvation. What may seem bad to the characters, ties them together closer in the end. Baldwin expresses one way of breaking free through the death of the narrator’s daughter. The beginning of restoring the brother’s relationship

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