The younger brother is Sonny, who at the beginning of the story is arrested for heroin and is also a jazz pianist. Jazz and the blues are about the heart, soul, and spirit and Baldwin shows this through the transformation of the brother’s relationship. The music not only helps the narrator understand himself, but his relationship with Sonny. It helps tell a
This surprises me because I never would’ve thought that Hip Hop is a culture, especially the fact that it started out as a peaceful youth community. While I was researching, I’ve decided to look up the various rap artists during the 80s. Now the question is, is Hip Hop music always about egoistic rappers and gang violence? Of course not. These artists wrote about various meaningful topics - unity, social issues, politics, and the search for identity.
Gardner’s ideas are too drastic and I believe he didn’t have enough support in his argument that his plans would actually decrease the murders in gang violence. To say that his thoughts on drugs are the missing piece to gang-violence; I agree with him one-hundred percent. Yet, to pinpoint on drugs as the only reason viciousness and violence happens in gangs, is almost too good to be true. Dan may as well fly off to Never-Never land, because those dreams aren’t ever coming true. First off, I would like to thank Gardner for his enlightening point of view, of how gang violence is heavily influenced by the whole drug trade and the black market that associates itself with it.
Kody’s life would be greatly affected by the outnumbering gangs growing around the area where he lived. At a young age Kody had a big decision to make concerning whether he wanted to live a life of a gang member or live a life of a civilian. At the age of eleven Kody, also known as Monster Kody, new that he wanted to live the ghetto life of a gang member. Theories of delinquency attempt to provide an explanation and reason as to why the juvenile engages in delinquent acts. This paper attempts to explain the reasons behind Kody Scott’s delinquent behavior and why he decided to live the life of a gangster.
Sonny’s Blues, by James Baldwin, was about two brothers from Harlem. The older brother’s name is unknown, and the younger brother being Sonny. Sonny’s brother was a high school math teacher. Sonny, lived on his own and had the dream to play music with jazz musicians. But, he ends up getting arrested out of his apartment.
In some cases the personal perspective may also detract from the historical value and may be a slight deterrent in the way one reads the book. Some novels are very detailed and gruesome and only focus on the beatings and torturous parts of slavery. Collison’s novel did not mention the abusive part as much as other novels did which may bias the reader in one way or another. The book about Shadrach focused on his life as a whole; not just the “stripes” he got that day. Collison’s novel focuses on how Minkins escaped from slavery and how he was going to better his life and learn from the experiences that he had encountered.
In ‘Stuart: A Life Backwards,’ many themes are heavily present. One of these themes is addiction in both drugs and alcohol. In chapter 3, when Masters and Stuart are in Stuart’s apartment ‘Stuart reels off the names of his medications.’ This shows that Stuart is educated in legal drugs, only because he has been prescribed them in the past. Therefore, this suggests to the audience that taking these legal drugs which makes him feel better and less in pain physically so he thought that this would work for his emotional pain as well. However, in comparison to Stuart taking prescribed legal drugs, it us shows the audience in chapter 5 that he also takes Illegal drugs such as injecting heroin “to keep the costs down.” He started taking illegal drugs in his childhood, as he used to sniff glue and tippex which led to him loosing “five friends” from this.
Even Sonny, for all his problems he has with drugs, helps the people around him endure and survive by channeling their frustrated desires into his music The drugs on the streets of Harlem have affected both the narrator and Sonny very deeply. It made Sonny start doing bad things and it made the narrator turn his back on his brother he was supposed to protect. Both the narrator and Sonny wanted to get out of Harlem but only Sonny decided to do something but went on
Sonny is dead. I know that I shouldn’t be blaming myself with this but I think that it is my fault that Sonny is dead. Deep down I knew that he was going to use drugs again. I just knew. I lied to myself believing that Sonny was getting better and that he was making progress.
Does “Gangster” rap promote violence, influence teens to engage in illegal activities and encourage homophobic and misogynistic feelings? THESIS: Gangster rap does not influence teens that some illegal things are cool and it doesn’t promote violence, because for the most part they are just rapping about their own life experiences before they starting rapping. Rappers also use some offensive language because thats how they were raised and in the black community a lot of it is acceptable so its all they know. PROPOSAL: I chose to talk about gangster rap and the effect, if any, that it has because I think gangster rap is the interesting type of rap. Also because most of my all time favorite rappers were known as being gangster