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Essay 2: Rough DraftFamily background is important to know, remember and never forget and become familiar with what you came from. It depicts who you will be and how you will decide to live your life in the future, which is a result of how the someone is brought up from their childhood. In the short story ?Sonny’s Blues? by James Baldwin, we meet a character named Sonny and we follow his life journey of how his family background and heritage affected how he become a drug addict with no family or friend to turn to for support. With the use of tone, flashback and dialogue, the author shows that who people are today is a direct effect of what you surrounded yourself with earlier in life, in order to encourage the reader to look into their pasts to learn who they are and where they come from.

Through tone, the author shows how family background and heritage has a direct effect of who people become in the future. The author’s tone in Sonny’s Blues gives off a negative connotation in order to show how hard of a life Sonny had growing up and all of the decisions he was forced to make, which makes the reader feel more emotionally connected to the text. For example, ? They’ll let him out and then it’ll just start all over again?(Baldwin 405). The quote proves how the author does not believe that Sonny will have success in rehab nor will he ever kick his drug addiction, but with the help and support from a family member he may want to kick his addiction. After his daughter had died, Sonny’s brother wrote him a letter to describe how sorry he was for leaving him at such a young age. ?You don’t know how much I needed to hear from you. I wanted to write you many a time but I dug how much I must have hurt you and so I didn’t write? (Baldwin 406). Hearing from Sonny’s brother made Sonny realize he does have support within his family and his brother truly does care about him, which
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gives Sonny more of a reason to kick his drug addiction habit. With the author stating a strong and negative tone it shows the reader that Sonny’s family doesn’t support him and will not help with his drug addiction which could be a direct effect of where he came from in his family and how that has effected him now.

Flashbacks like tone, show the reader how family has shaped who Sonny is. In the story on page 410, we have a flashback of Sonny’s brother and their mother talking about Sonny right before the mother passed. ?Ain’t nothing going to happen to you or Sonny. Sonny’s all right. He’s a good boy and he’s got a good sense too.?(Baldwin 410) The audience can see from this quote that his mother truly believed what a great person Sonny was and never truly thought he would ever get into trouble. Sonny’s mother had also mentioned about their father whose brother was killed in a drunk driving accident that involved a car full of white males. ?Your daddy never did really get it right again. Till the day he weren’t sure but that every white man he saw was the man that killed his brother. I ain’t telling you this to make you scared or bitter, I’m telling you this because you got a brother and the world ain’t changed? (Baldwin 411). His mother wanted to remind Sonny’s brother that through all the ups and downs with his brother, he needs to be the backbone and the one to support him. His family had supported him and always gave him the love and care families should give, but when his parents passed Sonny’s brother forgot how to pass the love along to him, which is why Sonny had such a drug addiction later on in life because he had no family to support him .

Furthermore, the use of dialogue in ?Sonny’s Blues? is important because it shows the relationship that Sonny had with his family and how that greatly impacted his life in the future.