Through_My_Brothers_Eyes

Through My Brothers Eyes The use of first person narrative in “Sonny’s Blues” helps to portray the thoughts and emotions of a man facing the difficult streets of Harlem. The author, James Baldwin, tells a story that depicts the challenges for a young man and his brother Sonny. He writes about their childhood and the hardships that they encountered, and because it is written from the narrator’s thoughts, the reader is able to fully appreciate the character’s feelings and experiences. It provides a greater understanding of how the situations actually affected him and it emotionally ties the reader to the story. The narrator writes little about his own life, but recites incidents of his brother’s life to reveal the challenges of Harlem. The narrator develops the character of his brother throughout the story. When he first find out that his brother, Sonny, has been arrested for drugs, he recalls the innocent boy that he remembers from his childhood. “...his face had been bright and open, there was a lot of copper in it; and he’d had wonderfully direct brown eyes, and great gentleness and privacy” (117). The reader experiences the story through the narrator, and thus begins brother, sonny, reader, narrator, through, story, life, until, understanding, thoughts, situation, never, harlem, first, find, face, experiences, writes, truly, tells, streets, says, provides, picture, out, music, might, man, little, know, james, free, feels