Sonny’s Blues Interpretive Essay

Close Reading: Re-read the last paragraph of “Sonny’s Blues.” Pay attention to the invocation of “the cup of trembling” and the footnote explaining the reference to Isaiah 51.17, 22–23. Write a short informal response paper—no more than a page—about the significance of this phrase and the relationship between its role as the concluding line of the story and its use in the biblical book of Isaiah.

Is Sonny likened to Jerusalem, which has drunk out of the cup in the biblical verse? Is the narrator likening himself to the Lord, who both gives and takes away the cup? What does it mean that, in the biblical verse, Jerusalem is told it “shalt no more drink it again”? Who in the story might represent “them that afflict thee” in the verse? Is it significant that the cup in Baldwin’s story is filled with a combination of Scotch and milk?

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