James Baldwin's "Sonny's Blues" is a powerful and emotional work of literature which has touched many lives. It captures its audience because of its unique style and most importantly, symbolic diction. This figurative strategy allows readers to become involved, perceive certain aspects of the story in their own way, and make their own connections, as their imagination takes charge. From the very beginning and as the story unfolds, this strategy begins to take play. In fact, the title of the story "Sonny's Blues" is symbolic as it represents both sorrow and music. Concepts like water, light, and flooding help deepen the story since they illustrate the narrator's feelings.
             Baldwin imaginatively expressed the discovery of his brother's arrest for possession and sale of heroin through metaphors. By words relating to the different states of water/liquid, he describes his feelings of devastation.
             "I was scared, scared for Sonny. He became real to me again. A great block of ice got settled in my belly and kept melting there slowly all day long, while I taught my classes algebra. It was a special kind of ice. It kept melting, sending trickles of ice water all up and down my veins, but it never got less. Sometimes it hardened and seemed to expand until I felt my guts were going to come spilling out or that I was going to choke or scream."
             "Ice" in this story function as a metaphor for the damming of the soul; and we are false to ourselves when we freeze ourselves that way, and false to those we love. Hence, "ice" symbolizes nature's efforts to put to sleep and anesthetize Baldwin's agony of learning about Sonny's arrest. Furthermore, it symbolizes the narrator's fear of his brother's future, locked up in jail. The feeling of "[ice] melting, sending trickles of ice water all up and down [the narrator's] veins" is sim...