Compare And Contrast Sonny's Blues And The Lame Shall Enter First

When Comparing Flannery O’Connor’s short story, “The Lame Shall Enter First” and James Baldwin’s short story, “Sonny’s Blues” many similarities and differences come to mind. In both O’Connor and Baldwin’s short story’s they urge the reader to consider what the lack of fulfillment can do to people’s everyday lives. However, Baldwin addresses the theme of growing up in neglected households while O’Connor relates to the feeling of overall loneliness when it comes to home life. One of the first things we realized as readers in these two literary works is that in both of the stories the major characters have a real sense for lacking fulfilment in their everyday lives. In O’Connor’s short story, “The Lame Shall Enter First,” a major character is
In Baldwin’s short story, “Sonny’s Blues,” the narrator on page 48 comes right out and states, that both of his parents died and he was off to take care of his little brother on his own while still involved in the army. Early on in the story Sonny states on page 51, “I want to be a musician like Charlie Parker, one of the greatest musicians alive.” And the Narrator (Sonny’s brother) states, “You are getting to be a big boy, it’s time to start thinking about your future.” This is just one small example of the first time Sonny was shot down and neglected in his household. Another example, as we learned about before, is when Sonny is living with Isabel and her parent’s and he gets yelled at for doing the only thing that seem right to him, skipping school and playing music. After this incident Sonny completely shut down and turned to a more damaging pain relief, Horse. Later on in the story on page 58, Sonny and his brother are talking about a singer down the street and Sonny says, “When she was singing before, her voice reminded me for a minute of what heroin feels like sometimes -when it’s in your veins. It makes you feel warm and cool at the same time. And distant. It makes you feel in control. Sometimes you’ve just got to have that feeling.” When Sonny say this it really makes me believe that during his whole life he was told what to do and how to do it, and his only family member
In “The Lame Shall Enter First,” Sheppard states to his son Norton, on page 336, “You have a healthy body and a good home. Your daddy gives you everything you need and want. You don’t have a grandfather who beats you. And your mother is not in the state penitentiary,” and Norton responds with, “If she was in the penitentiary, I could at least go see her.” So we learn very early on in this story that Norton’s mom died and it’s just him and his dad fending for themselves. With Norton’s eyes on Rufus during the entire story, Sheppard seems to forget and overlook Norton the whole time. On page 339, Sheppard is thinking about Rufus and states, “He wanted to give the boy something to reach for besides his neighbor’s goods. He wanted to stretch his horizons. He wanted him to see the universe, to see that the darkest parts of it could be penetrated. He would give anything for the boy to be able to have that.” After you read this as a reader you think to yourself well why wouldn’t he want that for his own son? So again, here is another fact that we are given by O’Connor that this boy really is all on his own, even his dad wants nothing to do with him. Towards the end of the story on page 348 Norton is looking through a telescope and think he see’s his mother’s resting place. Norton says to his dad, “I’ve found her! I found mamma! Come and look!”