Isolation In Sonny's Blues 'And Shiloh'
Short Stories Exam Essay Short stories are entertaining tales, not very high in details, about an assortment of people, places, events, etc. While reading the short stories, I found that the main characters, the narrator of “Sonny’s Blues” by James Baldwin, Leroy in “Shiloh” by Bobbie Ann Mason and Julia in “Country Husband” by John Cheever, all experienced their worlds through different scenarios that caused isolation throughout their story. Isolation consists of a character, or person, taking themselves into their own world and how they want to see it. Personally, I isolate myself from having fun with friends to go into my room, with complete silence, to do my homework in a relaxing environment. Sonny experiences his life with immature control over his brother, Leroy
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experiences his life as an outcast, and Julia experiences his life in frustration. All of these characters lack confidence, within their lifestyles, that eventually leads to isolation.
In the story “Sonny’s Blues, the unnamed narrator shows his life with an immature control over his brother Sonny. After losing contact with his brother, and later, the death of his daughter, the narrator decides to contact his drugged-out brother Sonny in prison. The narrator then goes into the Army and comes back for their mother’s funeral and the narrator reminisces on a promise he made to his mother to look after his brother; this is where his naïve control over his brother begins. As they talk at the funeral, Sonny reveals his aspirations to become a jazz pianist which is immediately dismissed by his brother. Sonny is then sent to his sister-in-law’s family’s house to go to college but after the family’s hard time with all his practice and skipping school repeatedly to play piano, Sonny leaves and joins the Navy. After his return, the brothers fight and don’t see each other for an extended amount of time, until Sonny comes home and invite his brother to his concert. The brothers unite and find that music brought them together after lacking such confidence in what they needed in life. In “Sonny’s Blues”, the narrator shows his isolation throughout living in the streets of Harlem.
Although he has a family, he is frightened by what happens and where he lives. He does not express going outside or socializing with many people. The narrator tells the audience that he is in isolation by not contacting his brother for so long. He states, “I gave up. I decided, if he didn’t change his mind, that we could always talk about it later.” The narrator shows us that he had little feelings for his brother when things were rough. I think that the narrator lacked confidence within contacting his brother and exploring the life of Harlem. He tells us that his relationship with his brother was not good, and I believe it is because he gave up on him. After the loss of his daughter, he lacks confidence in all aspects of society. He not only lacked confidence in contacting his brother, he also isolated himself from wanting to change. I think that if the narrator had more confidence, he would’ve changed his brother’s situation much earlier in the story. The moral of the story would’ve changed to prolonging the relationship with his brother, instead of making up for lack
thereof. In the story “Shiloh,” the main character, Leroy, views his life as an outcast. After working his whole life as a truck driver, Leroy was always on the road driving his truck, only stopping at home for a few days before leaving again. However, after seriously injuring his leg, Leroy is forced to stop driving his truck and begins his life as a stay-at-home husband and begins to view life as an outsider. He realizes that he doesn’t know his wife very well and they share many awkward moments because they have run out of things to talk about. He develops the idea to build his wife a log cabin, an idea that absolutely repulses her, and eventually leads to her leaving their relationship. Leroy shows complete isolation in the beginning of this short story. He is always gone and lacking the structural support of a relationship. Leroy finds himself gone, quite often, and realizes that his isolation takes a toll on his social life. After 15 years, Leroy had been in an accident thus throwing his life back into society, and his lost relationship. I think that Leroy had been planning on building a log cabin, for Norma Jean, just to add onto his isolation. Throughout the short story, you never find Leroy wanting to go out and explore and socialize with his wife. Leroy lacks confidence throughout this short story because he is afraid to ask his wife what is truly wrong with their relationship. Besides being gone for 15 years, Leroy does not have the confidence in wanting to slowly make things right with Norma Jean. He simply jumps to building a cabin to make up for lost time. Had Leroy had confidence, with trying to make up for lost time, his relationship would not have been buried. If Leroy had taken the time to sit down with Norma Jean and talk about what he can do to make things better, she might have reconsidered leaving him. Leroy states, “Don’t worry Norma, I’ll do something,” when in reality, he sat around smoking pot thinking of ways to regain his trust within his wife. Had Leroy had confidence in rebuilding his relationship, Norma Jean would not have left the way she did. Julia, from the story “Country Husband,” experiences his life in frustration. After hearing her husband survive a deadly plane crash, she takes no interest in what had happened. Julia finds herself to be caught up with ragging on what Francis, her husband, and how he goes about getting chores done around the house. Later, Francis disregards his wife and her annoying intentions of constant happiness, and tries to unite with a young baby-sitter. Julia finds herself to be doing everything for her husband Francis. She is constantly picking up laundry, cooking meals, taking care of the kids, and making ongoing lists of tasks. Later, Francis is found to have multiple problems with his relationship and family. He then, goes to a psychiatrist to fix his lonesome problems. Julia finds herself to be isolated throughout this short story because she is always doing things for her husband. I think she is isolated because she didn’t show any concern with what had happened to her husband with the plane crash. He husband, Francis, tries to find another companion when he realizes his wife sets herself aside and doesn’t show him love. The family, as a whole, needs to be fixed in this story. It seems that Julia is lonely because she is caught up with doing so much for Francis. Julia states, “Damn you, Francis Weed. I’ve worked hard for the social position we enjoy in this place, and I won’t stand by and see you wreck it!” This shows us that Julia wanted what was best in her relationship. However, she was left out to dry and lonely when her husband tried to unite with the baby-sitter. I think that if Julia had confidence, she would’ve got up and left Francis for what he had done. She never took into consideration that she could’ve found someone else while nearly being cheated on. Julia showed no confidence when trying to make her relationship better. She found herself picking up and doing many chores over and over again. Had Julia had confidence, she could’ve talked with Francis and found out what had really been happening. She could have solved or worked things out instead of going through with what she had done. Short stories can be expressed in many diverse ways. The three that I have discussed in this article show that people in isolation have many different ways which shape their experiences and affect the harm or happiness that they get in return. Leroy, Julia, and the unnamed narrator all experience their life differently but in their cases, they all end up making decisions and facing life in a way that hurt their capability to lead a worthy life. These characters lacked confidence, which is a large part of my lifestyle. I live every day to the fullest. I take confidence everywhere I go. For instance, in baseball, my team and I use confidence to know what is right and what is wrong. If we use confidence wisely, we will go far and win championships. I personally use confidence when pitching to know that I can always beat the batter. If I, and my team, didn’t have confidence, we would never be able to make it where we are today. We take our skills and confidence into winning college baseball games.
Great Expectations Exam Essay After reading Great Expectations by Charles Dickens, and learning about an orphan boy named Pip who goes through a great amount of struggle in his life, I can fairly say that I am moved by the character. Pip is a complex character that is trying to improve and advance his life towards happiness and a search for the answers in order to do so, only to find out that they were with him the whole time. Throughout the novel, Pip displays many different values that help him lead a truly happy life such as compassion, optimism and loyalty. One of Pip’s greatest character values is his optimism. Although he lived a life that was full of disappointment and hardships from the time were just a baby, Pip’s strong optimism throughout his life is crucial towards his goal of becoming truly happy. Pip first reveals this optimism when he decides not to focus on the negatives and celebrate that he has a person like Joe in his life. He respects Joe and although he is optimistic about becoming something that he thinks is more important than Joe in life, he spends his time with him and doesn’t complain much about where he lives or who he lives with. After meeting Miss Havisham, and his future woman Estella, Pip shows his powerful optimism in two different ways; by being optimistic that Miss Havisham will teach him to become a gentleman, and by being optimistic that someday, he will marry and live with Estella. Although he isn’t doing much for Miss Havisham in her mansion, he thinks that by knowing her, he will drive towards the life of a gentleman. Although Estella treats him cruelly and shows little interest in him, he continues to believe that they were destined to be together and that Miss Havisham will organize their marriage. Another student agrees with this happening of Pip’s optimism by stating, “We can see, even early in, that there is always something going on underneath his soft manner; like a duck on the water, he is calm on the surface yet those feet are just paddling away underneath” (Fletcher). Pip has a great sense of optimism throughout the book that keeps his thoughts and confidence running throughout his hardships in life. Compassion is another value that Pip is full of; Pip has one of the most open hearts I’ve ever read of. Pip shows this compassion at the beginning of the novel when he is kind and discreet to an escaped convict and helps the him by bringing him food and brandy. Although fear helped him make the decision to help, it was Pip’s compassion for a fellow human being that I believe influenced him the most. Later in the story, after gaining his fortune and becoming great friends with Herbert Pocket, he shows his compassion again by secretly giving money to his friend in order for him to be able to pursue his dreams. Even though Pip has lots of money, he is still kind enough to not be stingy. This is important because he not only helps his friend, but he does so secretly and therefore shows that he did not seek anything in return and he did this act out of kindness and compassion. Pip’s final acts of compassion are for the escaped convict, Magwitch, of whom he helped later gave wealth. Pip helps Magwitch hide as he is escaping from the police and a man out for his death and risks his own well-being in doing so. After growing a loving bond for Magwitch, and hearing his tragic story, Pip shows his compassion by doing everything in his power to help Magwitch escape to freedom and never leaving his side while he is in the hospital after being caught. Another student agrees with me when he says, “Pips kindness paid off for him when he first had an encounter with "the convict" he was scared of him and just did as he was told, and now reading on Magwitch became a big part of his life” (Filley). Pip was a good person throughout the whole novel and that helped him become a truly happy person in the end. Another important value Pip showed was his loyalty. Pip was very loyal to Joe, Magwitch and Herbert throughout the majority of the story. Although Pip does disregard Joe in the story, I blame his childishness for his actions and I discount his treatment of Joe because we could tell that he regretted them and made up for them in the end. Pip showed a great deal of loyalty to Herbert and Magwitch. Pip was a loyal friend to Herbert and never betrayed his trust, stuck by him through rough times and helped him fulfill his dreams to become a merchant by giving him money to get into school. However, Pip showed the most loyalty to Magwitch. He helped Magwitch hide from the law and risked his wealth and life to try and help him escape to freedom. Pip grew close to his second father and truly stood by his side when Magwitch was in the hospital. Pip is a remarkable character that grows a tremendously throughout the novel and eventually reaches his great expectations and quest for true happiness in the meaning of life. Pip’s ability to be optimistic through rough times, his feeling of compassion for those around him, and his loyalty to his loved ones are values that help Pip become a true gentleman. Pip possessed the values to live a life from a young age and managed to find his true inner self throughout his great expectations.
experiences his life as an outcast, and Julia experiences his life in frustration. All of these characters lack confidence, within their lifestyles, that eventually leads to isolation.
In the story “Sonny’s Blues, the unnamed narrator shows his life with an immature control over his brother Sonny. After losing contact with his brother, and later, the death of his daughter, the narrator decides to contact his drugged-out brother Sonny in prison. The narrator then goes into the Army and comes back for their mother’s funeral and the narrator reminisces on a promise he made to his mother to look after his brother; this is where his naïve control over his brother begins. As they talk at the funeral, Sonny reveals his aspirations to become a jazz pianist which is immediately dismissed by his brother. Sonny is then sent to his sister-in-law’s family’s house to go to college but after the family’s hard time with all his practice and skipping school repeatedly to play piano, Sonny leaves and joins the Navy. After his return, the brothers fight and don’t see each other for an extended amount of time, until Sonny comes home and invite his brother to his concert. The brothers unite and find that music brought them together after lacking such confidence in what they needed in life. In “Sonny’s Blues”, the narrator shows his isolation throughout living in the streets of Harlem.
Although he has a family, he is frightened by what happens and where he lives. He does not express going outside or socializing with many people. The narrator tells the audience that he is in isolation by not contacting his brother for so long. He states, “I gave up. I decided, if he didn’t change his mind, that we could always talk about it later.” The narrator shows us that he had little feelings for his brother when things were rough. I think that the narrator lacked confidence within contacting his brother and exploring the life of Harlem. He tells us that his relationship with his brother was not good, and I believe it is because he gave up on him. After the loss of his daughter, he lacks confidence in all aspects of society. He not only lacked confidence in contacting his brother, he also isolated himself from wanting to change. I think that if the narrator had more confidence, he would’ve changed his brother’s situation much earlier in the story. The moral of the story would’ve changed to prolonging the relationship with his brother, instead of making up for lack
thereof. In the story “Shiloh,” the main character, Leroy, views his life as an outcast. After working his whole life as a truck driver, Leroy was always on the road driving his truck, only stopping at home for a few days before leaving again. However, after seriously injuring his leg, Leroy is forced to stop driving his truck and begins his life as a stay-at-home husband and begins to view life as an outsider. He realizes that he doesn’t know his wife very well and they share many awkward moments because they have run out of things to talk about. He develops the idea to build his wife a log cabin, an idea that absolutely repulses her, and eventually leads to her leaving their relationship. Leroy shows complete isolation in the beginning of this short story. He is always gone and lacking the structural support of a relationship. Leroy finds himself gone, quite often, and realizes that his isolation takes a toll on his social life. After 15 years, Leroy had been in an accident thus throwing his life back into society, and his lost relationship. I think that Leroy had been planning on building a log cabin, for Norma Jean, just to add onto his isolation. Throughout the short story, you never find Leroy wanting to go out and explore and socialize with his wife. Leroy lacks confidence throughout this short story because he is afraid to ask his wife what is truly wrong with their relationship. Besides being gone for 15 years, Leroy does not have the confidence in wanting to slowly make things right with Norma Jean. He simply jumps to building a cabin to make up for lost time. Had Leroy had confidence, with trying to make up for lost time, his relationship would not have been buried. If Leroy had taken the time to sit down with Norma Jean and talk about what he can do to make things better, she might have reconsidered leaving him. Leroy states, “Don’t worry Norma, I’ll do something,” when in reality, he sat around smoking pot thinking of ways to regain his trust within his wife. Had Leroy had confidence in rebuilding his relationship, Norma Jean would not have left the way she did. Julia, from the story “Country Husband,” experiences his life in frustration. After hearing her husband survive a deadly plane crash, she takes no interest in what had happened. Julia finds herself to be caught up with ragging on what Francis, her husband, and how he goes about getting chores done around the house. Later, Francis disregards his wife and her annoying intentions of constant happiness, and tries to unite with a young baby-sitter. Julia finds herself to be doing everything for her husband Francis. She is constantly picking up laundry, cooking meals, taking care of the kids, and making ongoing lists of tasks. Later, Francis is found to have multiple problems with his relationship and family. He then, goes to a psychiatrist to fix his lonesome problems. Julia finds herself to be isolated throughout this short story because she is always doing things for her husband. I think she is isolated because she didn’t show any concern with what had happened to her husband with the plane crash. He husband, Francis, tries to find another companion when he realizes his wife sets herself aside and doesn’t show him love. The family, as a whole, needs to be fixed in this story. It seems that Julia is lonely because she is caught up with doing so much for Francis. Julia states, “Damn you, Francis Weed. I’ve worked hard for the social position we enjoy in this place, and I won’t stand by and see you wreck it!” This shows us that Julia wanted what was best in her relationship. However, she was left out to dry and lonely when her husband tried to unite with the baby-sitter. I think that if Julia had confidence, she would’ve got up and left Francis for what he had done. She never took into consideration that she could’ve found someone else while nearly being cheated on. Julia showed no confidence when trying to make her relationship better. She found herself picking up and doing many chores over and over again. Had Julia had confidence, she could’ve talked with Francis and found out what had really been happening. She could have solved or worked things out instead of going through with what she had done. Short stories can be expressed in many diverse ways. The three that I have discussed in this article show that people in isolation have many different ways which shape their experiences and affect the harm or happiness that they get in return. Leroy, Julia, and the unnamed narrator all experience their life differently but in their cases, they all end up making decisions and facing life in a way that hurt their capability to lead a worthy life. These characters lacked confidence, which is a large part of my lifestyle. I live every day to the fullest. I take confidence everywhere I go. For instance, in baseball, my team and I use confidence to know what is right and what is wrong. If we use confidence wisely, we will go far and win championships. I personally use confidence when pitching to know that I can always beat the batter. If I, and my team, didn’t have confidence, we would never be able to make it where we are today. We take our skills and confidence into winning college baseball games.
Great Expectations Exam Essay After reading Great Expectations by Charles Dickens, and learning about an orphan boy named Pip who goes through a great amount of struggle in his life, I can fairly say that I am moved by the character. Pip is a complex character that is trying to improve and advance his life towards happiness and a search for the answers in order to do so, only to find out that they were with him the whole time. Throughout the novel, Pip displays many different values that help him lead a truly happy life such as compassion, optimism and loyalty. One of Pip’s greatest character values is his optimism. Although he lived a life that was full of disappointment and hardships from the time were just a baby, Pip’s strong optimism throughout his life is crucial towards his goal of becoming truly happy. Pip first reveals this optimism when he decides not to focus on the negatives and celebrate that he has a person like Joe in his life. He respects Joe and although he is optimistic about becoming something that he thinks is more important than Joe in life, he spends his time with him and doesn’t complain much about where he lives or who he lives with. After meeting Miss Havisham, and his future woman Estella, Pip shows his powerful optimism in two different ways; by being optimistic that Miss Havisham will teach him to become a gentleman, and by being optimistic that someday, he will marry and live with Estella. Although he isn’t doing much for Miss Havisham in her mansion, he thinks that by knowing her, he will drive towards the life of a gentleman. Although Estella treats him cruelly and shows little interest in him, he continues to believe that they were destined to be together and that Miss Havisham will organize their marriage. Another student agrees with this happening of Pip’s optimism by stating, “We can see, even early in, that there is always something going on underneath his soft manner; like a duck on the water, he is calm on the surface yet those feet are just paddling away underneath” (Fletcher). Pip has a great sense of optimism throughout the book that keeps his thoughts and confidence running throughout his hardships in life. Compassion is another value that Pip is full of; Pip has one of the most open hearts I’ve ever read of. Pip shows this compassion at the beginning of the novel when he is kind and discreet to an escaped convict and helps the him by bringing him food and brandy. Although fear helped him make the decision to help, it was Pip’s compassion for a fellow human being that I believe influenced him the most. Later in the story, after gaining his fortune and becoming great friends with Herbert Pocket, he shows his compassion again by secretly giving money to his friend in order for him to be able to pursue his dreams. Even though Pip has lots of money, he is still kind enough to not be stingy. This is important because he not only helps his friend, but he does so secretly and therefore shows that he did not seek anything in return and he did this act out of kindness and compassion. Pip’s final acts of compassion are for the escaped convict, Magwitch, of whom he helped later gave wealth. Pip helps Magwitch hide as he is escaping from the police and a man out for his death and risks his own well-being in doing so. After growing a loving bond for Magwitch, and hearing his tragic story, Pip shows his compassion by doing everything in his power to help Magwitch escape to freedom and never leaving his side while he is in the hospital after being caught. Another student agrees with me when he says, “Pips kindness paid off for him when he first had an encounter with "the convict" he was scared of him and just did as he was told, and now reading on Magwitch became a big part of his life” (Filley). Pip was a good person throughout the whole novel and that helped him become a truly happy person in the end. Another important value Pip showed was his loyalty. Pip was very loyal to Joe, Magwitch and Herbert throughout the majority of the story. Although Pip does disregard Joe in the story, I blame his childishness for his actions and I discount his treatment of Joe because we could tell that he regretted them and made up for them in the end. Pip showed a great deal of loyalty to Herbert and Magwitch. Pip was a loyal friend to Herbert and never betrayed his trust, stuck by him through rough times and helped him fulfill his dreams to become a merchant by giving him money to get into school. However, Pip showed the most loyalty to Magwitch. He helped Magwitch hide from the law and risked his wealth and life to try and help him escape to freedom. Pip grew close to his second father and truly stood by his side when Magwitch was in the hospital. Pip is a remarkable character that grows a tremendously throughout the novel and eventually reaches his great expectations and quest for true happiness in the meaning of life. Pip’s ability to be optimistic through rough times, his feeling of compassion for those around him, and his loyalty to his loved ones are values that help Pip become a true gentleman. Pip possessed the values to live a life from a young age and managed to find his true inner self throughout his great expectations.