Respond to one of the following prompts in an essay of 1500 – 2000 words.
1) There is a strong overlapping motifs of fear, safety, and danger in James Baldwin’s “Sonny’s Blues” and Ta-Nehisi Coates’s “Between the World and Me.” What message do these works have to send? What do these writers want you to understand about the Black experience of their respective worlds?
2) Setting (i.e. when and where the story takes place) plays a prominent role in “Sonny’s Blues” as it moves the characters through time and space. Explore the history of the settings in “Sonny’s Blues” and use secondary materials to help you describe. How as Harlem molded the narrator, Sonny, and the people of their community? Are readers treated as people inside the community or outsiders looking in? What does Baldwin want us to understand about this place and time, as well as the people who came out of it?
3) How does one find meaning in suffering? Using a philosophical approach, explore the worldview Baldwin presents in this story. How or why do we avoid death, and is it possible or preferable to avoid suffering? Use secondary sources that can help you with the existentialism present in the story.
