View a FREE sample

This test consists of 5 short answer questions, 10 short essay questions, and 1 (of 3) essay topics.

Short Answer Questions

1. Approximately how long a gap in performance history did Sonny have before taking the narrator to his performance?

2. From what does Grace die?

3. Which of the following songs is sung at the sidewalk revival?

4. To get away from what had Sonny first left Harlem?

5. In what season does Grace die?

Short Essay Questions

1. How does the narrator depict the performer’s experience of music?

2. What effect does the narrator notice the sidewalk revival has on its attendees?

3. What revelation does Sonny report from listening to the sidewalk revival?

4. Why does Sonny make a point of smoking in front of the narrator after his mother’s death?

5. What does the narrator perceive Creole asserting “the blues were all about” (47)?

6. How does Isabel realize that Sonny has left?

7. Why does the narrator posit that passers-by doubt the holiness of those conducting the sidewalk revival?

8. What effect does Grace’s death have on Isabel?

9. How does the narrator depict the common experience of hearing music?

10. Why does the narrator express misgivings about Sonny going into music?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

A lack of formal sectional division in the short story obliges a fairly arbitrary breakdown of the text for purposes of study and discussion. How might the short story be sectioned off other than it currently is? Why might those divisions be appropriate, based on the text and its contexts of composition and reception?

Essay Topic 2

Assuming that “Sonny’s Blues” should be standard reading for a given class and level, what class and what level? Why that class and why that level? What in the text suggests as much, and how does it do so?

Essay Topic 3

To what other writer’s work in your experience does Baldwin’s seem most similar? What makes the writers similar? What differentiates them? Overall, which do you regard as doing better at the craft of writing, and why?

(see the answer keys)

This section contains 592 words (approx. 2 pages at 300 words per page) View a FREE sample