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Identity In Sonny's Blues By James Baldwin

1832 Words8 Pages

For years psychologists have questioned what makes a person who they become. They debate and analyze the question of identity. Some believe nurture forms an identity, while others believe nature is to blame. The only agreement on the topic of identity throughout the psychology community is what identity truly means. An identity consists of tiny fragments or aspects of a person put together to form their true self. Many psychologists measure identity using a system called the “big five” traits. The “big five” classification system contains some of the most prominent traits and how they vary between people. The traits include: “openness to experience, conscientiousness, extroversion, agreeableness, and emotional stability” (Young). According to psychology, these five traits make up identity, but the scientists cannot agree on how they become so varied from person …show more content…

Pain can bring out the best in someone, but it can often bring out the worst. James Baldwin, the author of “Sonny’s Blues,” brings to light the way identity can be negatively affected based on how you cope with hardships in one’s life. In the story, two brothers grow up in Harlem to become completely different people as adults in spite the fact that they lived the same lives as children. The two faced many struggles in their lifetimes and it ultimately changed who they became. The pair had lost their father and mother younger than most men and coped differently. Sonny, the younger brother, faces the unfortunate addiction of heroin to grieve his father as “he and Sonny had never gone too well,” while the narrator becomes boring and afraid of life because of his mother’s death and her advice to watch over Sonny (Baldwin 346). This story shows the great impact that pain can have on a person. Both brothers come from the same life, same DNA, and the same environment, yet they become who they are through their own coping

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