Benbekhaled 1 Brian Benbekhaled Professor Jacobs ENC 1102 April 16, 2014

Proposal to Sonnys Blues by James Baldwin: Sonnys Blues is a classic story written by James Baldwin in the mid-1800s. This story is about a young man struggling through his life while using drugs (Heroin), as an escape route to live a better life without stress. He has an older brother that is a mathematics teacher seven years older than Sonny. As Sonny starts using and selling heroin, he is later sentenced to jail where his brother later finds out through the local newspaper about his brother getting arrested. Towards the end of the story, the narrator is slowly figuring out who Sonny really is and what he is capable of. Throughout his life they never really made a close connection to each other like a normal brotherhood would be. This project is mainly focused on how James Baldwin uses his personal biographical experiences to provide his work with raw material straight from his own life. The biographical themes in this short story have made many critics left with millions of questions on how Baldwin wrote this wonderful piece. In addition to Baldwins work, most critics prefer to view him as a civil rights writer rather than as a Christian writer with his bible close at hand. When it came to equality, James Baldwin was known for his respect he gave to everyone even if they would pay no attention to him. Biographical literary criticism must reflect directly from the authors actual experience. In other words, authors that use this style of writing enjoy the feel of expressing their own specific thoughts in more of an opinion kind of way. To sum everything up, the research shown in this project is supported by many critics that which have also enjoyed the thrill of James Baldwins work. With that being said, James Baldwin

Benbekhaled 2 Brian Benbekhaled Professor Jacobs ENC 1102 April 16, 2014

clearly expressed his personality in many ways for the critics to see a better picture of himself as a writer.