Writing this critical analysis research paper was quite an experience. I chose the story, ” Sonny’s Blues” to write my essay on because it’s a story that focuses on how the setting of Harlem impacted the protagonist. I went to school in Harlem for 4 years and will spend the next 4 years in Harlem. So I kind of connect with what the narrator was talking about when he explained the kind of neighborhood Harlem was. I saw it all in Harlem, it obviously isn’t the best place. You won’t see a civilized society around there most of the time. So when I read this story, I kind of understood where Sonny was coming from, and how he dealt with it was inspiring. Hopefully, the readers will see how Sonny turned his life around by following his passion.

  The genre of my essay is informative,  I hope the readers can grasp how art transformed Sonny’s life and how the Freudian concepts played a role in changing Sonny’s life. Sonny went from being called a hoodlum to playing the piano with a band at a club. I hope the readers also understand the 3 Freud concepts I mentioned, which were sublimation, repression, and artistic gift. Furthermore, the tone I set in my essay was formal, thorough, and direct. I talked about how the narrator reacted to Sonny being a drug addict, all the way to Sonny using his talent to play the piano to achieve freedom. Readers can understand the roadblocks colored people faced in Harlem in the 1950s and the road the less fortunate had to take.

The audience I aim for is anyone with an interest in the lives of African Americans in Harlem during the 1950s. They can comprehend the hardships they went through to succeed. Overall, this essay was probably the hardest out of all of them because there were a lot of points to mention in the essay. I always had to keep it in the back of my head to write this essay as if the reader had never read the story before. So I had to go into detail about the Freudian concepts and how they were applied. I had to make sure all the characters were introduced correctly and many more. I had trouble with comma splices and I believe I understand them better after reading the articles. I learned a lot of stuff that will help me in the future when writing essays.

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