homework

1. Sonny’s Blues is told from Sonny’s brother’s perspective. We never do find out his name though. The narrator is a very straight person meaning someone who is always trying to morally do the things he thinks are right such as not doing drugs and abiding the law. His view affects the story because his brother is the opposite of him. So we know how Sonny’s brother feels about the things Sonny does but, not until the end of the story do we get a peek into how Sonny really feels.
2. The older brother is a school teacher suggesting that he is not a wild person who likes to go out and go to jazz night clubs and do drugs. Also that he is a very straight person
3. If the story were told by Sonny we would be able to know why Sonny made the choices he made and how it has affected his views on life. We would also be able to know what Sonny was going through when he was in rehab.
4. The death of the narrator’s daughter prompts him to finally write Sonny.
5. The mother makes the narrator promise to always look after Sonny and make sure he is doing well. The narrator fails to fulfill this promise until he writes Sonny and then Sonny eventually comes to live with the narrator. Then they both open up more to each other and the narrator lets Sonny know that he does not want him to die, or kill himself by overdosing on heroin.
6. With the writer deciding to keep the main characters’ names simple, it lets the reader become more involved in the story for a couple of reasons. One, they do not have to remember so many characters to try to keep up with the story. Two, it makes the story seem like the reader is more a part of it since the writer is calling the characters mom and dad and the brother by the first name. The audience almost feels like they are in the role of the older brother(narrator) since the story is told from his view and he is never named.
7. Sonny has made the music his own by not letting drugs control the way he plays. He most likely was only playing before under the influence of drugs and now that he is drug free, he will be able to play what he wants to play and not be under the control of heroin.

A Worn Path
1. The story is told from the writer’s perspective, but it may as well have been told from the old Phoenix’s perspective because she lets the audience know all of her thoughts out loud any way. It is not told from Phoenix’s perspective because she is not describing the action in the story, unless she is speaking.
2. Phoenix is aptly named because she acts as a phoenix would. She stays strong even as she gets old and is extremely loyal to her grandson.
3. By having Phoenix tell us pretty much everything that is going on in her mind, it does make it a little hard to separate reality from fantasy. However, it really makes it easier for you to put yourself in Phoenix’s shoes and realize that what she is doing is not easy and that sometimes people have to amuse themselves to get through things.
4. She is not treated well by the white people, but she is not treated very poorly either. The audience should be able to tell from this that the story is set after the end of the civil war but definitely before the 1950’s in the south.
5. She admires the black dog because he, like her, looks as if he has persevered through some tough times but that does not stop the dog from keeping on.