The relationship between sex and power within literature is incredibly complex. The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway features the main character Jake, who faces the relationship between sex and power via his impotence, as well as his love for a...

Intimacy is a topic widely discussed and desired. Many think of intimacy as a sort of spectrum, and most hope to experience something as close to the real thing as possible. In Giovanni’s Room, Baldwin says that intimacy is not a spectrum, but...

Go Tell it on the Mountain by James Baldwin artfully illuminates the struggles the main character John faces when his race, religion, and family structure all intersect on his fourteenth birthday. As John sits on the threshold between his...

James Baldwin’s Go Tell it on The Mountain is an autobiographical look into the corruptible nature of the black male condition as it relates to the church. John Grimes is a young boy but his narrative suggests that his existence is shaped by...

In Go Tell It On the Mountain, James Baldwin discusses the power that can be found in secularity and in religion. The novel starts with John Grimes waking up to his fourteenth birthday in Harlem, 1935. The entire novel spans a few days, but as the...

In James Baldwin’s Go Tell It on the Mountain, religion functions not only as form of worship but also as a covert site of sexual expression. In the novel’s opening chapters, Baldwin often characterizes religious worship in language that borders...

God’s Apostles Bring Redemption In Every Life.

Shame, blame, all the same.

Good Artists Breathe Reality Into Existence, Lies.

Shame, blame, all the same.

This is Gabriel’s creative process.

Gabriel’s creative process is one that dwells in shame,...

Religion and spirituality are significant facets in the African-American communities as the church has been an emblem of power and freedom from the period of slavery into the civil rights era. Go Tell It on the Mountain as a fictional...

Prior to the events of the Stonewall Riots, queer and LGBTQ+ movements within the United States ran primarily underground and parallel to the rest of American social activist movements. Marginalized writers and authors during the early- to...

The novel The Quiet American, by Graham Greene, tells the story of the Vietnam War from the perspectives of three different characters. Fowler represents the British viewpoint and is also the narrator of the novel. Pyle gives the American...

For many years, audiences have seen art forms extend beyond their original categorisations into other artistic spheres – Pieter Bruegel’s painting inspiring William Carlos Williams’ Hunter in the Snow or Leonard Cohen’s music influenced by the...

Each year, residents of forgotten neighborhoods pay the price of being alive. In “Sonny’s Blues,” James Baldwin uses references to human vulnerability to express the impact of home environment on outlook and life experience. Through the actions of...

Music is a powerful language which speaks to us, moves us, and fills us with emotion. In Sonny's Blues, the voice of Jazz mediates the relationship between two brothers. As the older brother's appreciation of music grows, he understands better the...

James Baldwin provides several constructions of black masculinity through his two texts Everybody's Protest Novel and Sonny's Blues. Since this essay is comparing works from the same author, it is essential to look at what these constructions are...

In James Baldwin's "Sonny's Blues," the abundance of darkness reveals the beauty of light. Despite how uncomfortable and painful it is to be in the dark, the main character, Sonny empowers himself by stepping into the light and incorporating his...

James Baldwin’s “Sonny’s Blues” is a tale of suffering. Placed in an environment that is “encircled by disaster” (Baldwin 1615), the narrator constantly attempts to escape from the suffering around him. He avoids all contact with those around him...

James Baldwin’s If Beale Street Could Talk and “The Man Child” are both texts that demonstrate how the isolation of characters can yield overtly violent outcomes. Though the perspective from which Baldwin challenges dominant forces differs between...

Humans are made of the tangible; flesh and blood, muscles and bones, cells and nerves. The survival of man can be dissected into the purely scientific, the emotionless, the artless. The value of the anatomical can clearly not be understated, as...

Martin Luther King and James Baldwin lived in the era of racial inequality and the civil rights movement, an era when African-Americans were still fighting to find a place in society. In 1963, King wrote a famous letter from jail while in 1957;...

There is a worn-out old saying about how when a door closes, there will always be a window to crawl through instead. But what if the window has bars on it? Or what if it is too high for someone to reach without anyone to give them a boost, and no...

James Baldwin’s short story “Sonny’s Blues” is about the complicated relationship between two brothers. The tale opens with a nameless narrator discovering his brother, Sonny, had been imprisoned for the use and distribution of heroin. Until his...

The past is anything but mere history; it sheathes, surrounds, and encompasses us, as humans, as we forge on through life. Similarly, in two eminent American works of fiction - The Underground Railroad, The Cafeteria, and Sonny’s Blues - the past...

Drug abuse is one of the largest epidemics facing our world today. Through research, we have been able to get a better understanding of the factors that cause drug abuse and consequently drug addiction in the first place. Studies done specifically...

I encountered a lot of people in Europe. I even encountered myself. - James Baldwin

James Baldwin's writings are most famous for their complexity of racial, sexual, and class distinctions in Western societies during 20th century America. His...