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Significance of Loneliness and Isolation in Our Lives

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Significance of Loneliness and Isolation in Our Lives
As we climb up the mountain of life, we realize that at some point in time we all have to go through a stage of loneliness and isolation. It’s not easy but this stage does help us to become better people. A lot of people believe that when they get their dream career and their dream lives they would be happy beyond measures, but unfourtanely life does not work out that way. You see that stage of loneliness and isolation can happened at any stage in your life child hood, adolescence, adult hood. We all as human beings must experience this only because it makes us stronger; it opens our eyes to the world. “Cathedral” by Raymond Carver and “Sonny’s Blues “by James Baldwin are two exemplary works of literature that shows the importance of going through loneliness and isolation and how it opens up one’s eyes to a whole new life. James Baldwin’s “Sonny’s Blues” is a perfect example of how one is not open with their self to view others just as others view him. The narrator of the story is a high school algebra teacher, a husband, a father, and last but not least a brother. Throughout the beginning of the story you can tell that the narrator is missing something in his life, you wouldn’t think that because it seems like he had everything. That just goes to show you that nothing is what it seems on the outside, and the narrator noticed that I believe. In the beginning of the story the narrator recently found out that his little brother Sonny had been arrested for dealing drugs. He couldn’t understand how a bright young man such as his brother could get himself into such a situation. “I told myself that Sonny wasn’t crazy… he’d always been a good boy, he hadn’t turned hard or evil or disrespectful they way kids can… especially in Harlem” (413). Even though he had suspicions he didn’t bother with them he kept putting it out his mind. “ I hadn’t wanted to know. I had had my suspicions, but I didn’t name them, I kept putting them away”(413). The narrator hasn’t seen his

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