Prompt #3: “ Sonny’s Blues” ( James Baldwin, 1957). In the story, the characters come in conflict with the culture in which he lives. Working Thesis: In my opinion most stories as conflict with one or more of the characters in the story, but how the characters deal with conflict will shapes the theme of a story and if they were to have done something different the theme would change or won’t change. When Sonny was about as old as the boys in classes had been bright and open, there was a lot of copper in it; and he’d had wonderfully direct brown eyes, and great gentleness and privacy. In my opinion I wondered what he looks like now. He was picked up the evening before, in a raid on an apartment down-town, for peddling and using heroin.