BCMA In 'Rocket Boys'

Sonny grows up with his brother, mother and alcoholic father in Harlem. How their father had lost his brother by hit and run and the impact it had on his life, on all their lives. “Your daddy was a crazy man that night thereafter. He says he never in his life seen anything as dark as that road after lights of that car had gone away.” It is also explained that Sonny is described as introverted and solitary without much emotion while his father is explained as a boisterous alcoholic that passes away when Sonny is just 15. Their mother dies a short after their father does and some time later his brother explains his own additional loss of his daughter Grace who passed away from Polio. How it wasn’t until after she died that he attempted to reconnect with Sonny. How Sonny struggles with addiction to heroin and suffering; and the effects it had on him. How Sonny’s brother went off to the service, their mother dies and Sonny goes to live with his brother and sister in law with the understanding that he must go to school. Sonny doesn’t want to go to school, he wants to be a professional jazz musician and pianist. Sonny’s brother doesn’t agree with this dream which causes one of many fights the two have causing more distance between them. Sonny and his brother had an often distant and difficult relationship. Sonny’s brother has a wife and family and works as a teacher while Sonny himself struggles with addiction and even goes to jail for some time. Sonny utilizes music to help him cope with his past.

My favorite character in Rocket Boys is Sonny’s father, Homer Hickman. This may seem like an odd choice, given that Sonny’s father is not always kind to Sonny, and often hinders him. Other times, however, he helps Sonny greatly. For example, in the beginning of the story, he pours Sonny’s chemicals down the creek and forbids Sonny from launching rockets on company property. Afterwards, he shows Sonny an area where he is allowed to launch rockets, the place that becomes Cape Coalwood. Everything Sonny’s father does often contradicts something done or said earlier in the book, which seems at first to be very confusing.

After Sputnik launches something sparks inside of Sonny, decides that he wants to build a rocket and go work with Dr. Von Braun. He also begins to gain some respect from his Dad. The first time Sonny and his friends attempted to build a rocket it exploded damaging part of his mother’s fence. Instead of being angry she asks sonny if he thinks he could build a rocket then she says”‘you’ve got to get out of Coalwood Sonny”’ (Homer H. Hickam 43) because she believes that Coalwood is dying. On the bus the next day, he is made fun of and his friends do not back him up. He wants to prove everybody wrong so he says that he will build the rocket himself. But he soon realizes he knows nothing about how to build a rocket. So he became desperate and decided

Every single person has influences. They may be biological, environmental, or social but everyone has influences. It is a part of being human. Sonny’s success is a manifestation of all the positive pressure he received from his influencers. Many people meandered into his life and helped but the people who stayed throughout the entire memoir and gave support were the women of Coalwood. The success of Sonny in rocketry was influenced heavily by the women in his life, Miss Riley, his mother, and Emily Sue.

As the narrator reflects on his past, he thinks to himself, “...the first time Sonny had ever had horse, he couldn’t have been much older than these boys now... They were filled with rage.” When he becomes “filled with rage” at such

The Narrator and Sonny found it hard to relate with one another. For example, when Sonny got older and returned from the Navy, Sonny and the Narrator always fought with each other. They couldn’t understand each other either. The Narrator said, “He came by the house from time to time, but we fought almost

Sonny’s older brother is an algebra school teacher with a wife and two kids. Sonny’s brother has strong values and he is the voice of reason in the story. In the beginning of the text the narrator mentions how he feels “trapped in darkness that roars outside” which gives us the image of how they both use to live in poverty (1) .Which gives the reader an idea of how both of them were raised and why sonny end result is different from the narrators.

The narrator experienced a lot of problems throughout his life but managed to emerge victoriously from most of them. Even with this, he needs to support Sonny because this was his mother's dying wish. "The death of the narrator's daughter, Sonny's failure to fit in with his own family, a stint in the navy all serve to alienate the brothers, even after their mother made the narrator promise to keep an eye on young Sonny" (Smith 22). The fact that they were born in a harsh environment, society's views in regard to their racial background, and the fact that they experienced a lot of hardships during their lives all had a severe effect on the personalities of each of the brothers.

Throughout the work, there are constant reminders that Sonny is a flawed communicator, as he is not “talkative”, struggles to remain serious in dialogue, and retains his privacy alike to his father (Baldwin 25). After the death of their mother, the narrator and Sonny engage in a conversation regarding Sonny’s future aspirations, yet throughout this conversation, Sonny does not remain serious, rather he grins and is sarcastic. One is correct to state that part of the reason that Sonny struggles to divulge his dream playing jazz to his brother is due to the judgemental response his brother may reply with. Nevertheless, Sonny’s inability to be serious in a conversation also demonstrates the vulnerability he has in conversations in talking about difficult topics. For instance, Sonny is quick to reflect the serious tone of the conversation through touches of sarcasm and rhetorical questions in order to hide his insecurities in revealing personal matters for the reason of judgement, but as well as for having to open himself to others.

When Sonny moves in with the family, he is given the expectation to finish college and stay out of trouble. Sonny has other ideas though and skips his classes to go to the local jazz club and play music. When the narrator first learns of Sonny’s antics he is very disappointed and is frustrated that Sonny continues to pursue a musical career. He believes it is part of the reason that Sonny has had so much trouble in the past and doesn’t believe it is a positive thing for his brother. Sonny is immediately kicked out and the two go for another extended period of time until talking again. Eventually the narrator has another change of heart and invites his brother to live with him again and Sonny agrees. The two struggle to communicate so one day Sonny invites the narrator to come watch him play at the jazz club and it is then that the narrator truly understands his younger brother. He is watching Sonny play with a group of musicians when he sees “Sonny’s face is trouble” (Baldwin 254) with the difficulty in

Sonny understands this notion and yearns to enlist in the Navy; he was ready to lie about his age. He thought, “if I say I’m old enough, they’ll believe me”, this signifies how eager Sonny was to have the understanding and acceptance that his older brother had. After Sonny returned from the Navy, the narrator still imaged him as someone who “carried himself, loose and dreamlike all the time”. He thought that Sonny had lost all prospects of reality and unfortunately his thoughts came out to be true. The narrators’ time spent in the military allowed him to make that judgment, therefore the setting of the military service established such an identity for the narrator, which made him successful in life and allowed him to help others as well. Also Sonny wanted to enlist in the army so it would take him away from the “killing streets” of Harlem and give him the opportunity to get a college education on the GI Bill.

opinion and to others that agree with him, but not necessarily everyone. If a person who

James Baldwin’s, “Sonny’s Blues,” illustrates the story between two different brothers as they struggle to discover the character of one another. “Sonny’s Blues” is narrated through the older brother’s point of view, as he portrays their difficulties in growing up, separation, and reunion. Baldwin purposely picks to tell the story in the first person point of view because of the omniscient and realistic effects it contribute to the story overall. The mother, father, and Sonny all express their accounts to the older brother, making him the perfect character to tell the story. In addition, the first person point of view allows the reader to experience the vicarious feelings that the

As a child growing up was difficult for the narrator and his brother. They lived in Harlem, which was far from safe in the 1920’s to the 1980’s. There was high crime and drug use. “’If I was smart, I’d have reached for a pistol a long time ago.’ ‘Look. Don’t tell me your sad story, if it was up to me, I’d give you one.’ Then I felt guilty-guilty, probably, for never having supposed that the poor bastard had a story of his own, much less a sad one, and I asked, quickly, ‘What’s going to happen to him now?’” (125) The conversation between the narrator and Sonny’s friend shows how the narrator wasn’t thinking about the lives around him. The narrator grew up poorly but so did others who lived in Harlem. They had their own pain

This vulnerability drives the plot forward, in addition to the narrators’ melancholic tone. Baldwin allowed the flashbacks to continuously trigger the narrator’s remembrance of his younger brother in a downhearted fashion. The narrator observes the children, while listening to the children shouting, cursing, and laughing” reminded him of Sonny (75). Furthermore, the narrator insists that the “whistling tune at once was very complicated and very simple”, which can be conclusive of Sonny’s personality, in addition to the “boy standing in the hallway” reminded him so much that the older brother “almost called his name” (75).