Parker Verhoeff

English 9

Mr.Salsich

4.14.09

The Struggles of Siblings:
An Essay on a Poem, and Short Story

In the song, "Everybody's Free (To Wear Sunscreen)" by Baz Luhrman, he says "be nice to your siblings; they are the best link to your past and the people most likely to stick with you in the future." The main characters in Naomi Shihab Nye's "The Little Brother Poem," and James Baldwin's short story, "Sonny's Blues," do not follow this quote at first. But then, when they realize what they're doing, they stop and reach out to their siblings-Periodic Sentence. They understand that family is the most important thing after all.

Figurative language is an excellent writing tool to get your point across, and Naomi Shihab Nye uses it perfectly. She writes, "You're Wall Street and I'm the local fruit market," which is just one example of this tool, that seems to make her writing flow, making it easier to understand the main theme. She writes about her and her brother, and about how they've always been different. Also she has been cruel to her brother, pushing him in front of a bike, telling him about evil monkeys who, "arrive in the night to kidnap boys with brown hair"-Asyndeton. She says, "It's a large order I know, dumping out a whole drawer at once, fingering receipts and stubs," knowing she's asking a lot for his forgiveness, but apologizing nonetheless. This is also more figurative language. In her apology, she isn't really dumping a drawer, thumbing through receipts-Participle Phrase (closer). The drawer is their life, and the receipts and papers are all of the things that her brother needs to forgive her for. She began the poem by talking to her brother. She stated the fact that, "there [was] much you never forgave me for," but she still says, "when you were born I was glad [...] [and] I wanted you." Nye's use of figurative language was exemplary-FAST, and even though it might have expressed the main point in a slight circuitous-FAST way, it still gave you the impression of what the poem was really about: Family.

Furthermore, "Sonny's Blues", by James Baldwin is also about two siblings. The older brother has been hard on his little brother, Sonny. Sonny has had a hard life, getting into drugs, and finally getting arrested for peddling heroine. But his older brother didn't fully understand how hard Sonny had it, until his two year old daughter Grace died; Baldwin writes, "my trouble made his real." In comparison, Naomi Shihab Nye never understood how her bullying towards her little brother affected him, until it was too late. She didn't realize how hard she had hurt him, until he already "disappeared". "You disappeared into the streets of Dallas at midnight on foot crying and I realized you'd been serious;" she had finally got the message that her brother was traumatized, and it hurt her because of it. Her trouble of not having a little brother, made his trouble of not having a comforting older sister real. Baldwin and Nye talk of two older siblings, two people who didn't pay attention to their younger sibling. Nye needed compassion-FAST from her little brother, for closure even though she knew it was a lot to ask for. All Sonny's brother had to do was listen to his music and buy him a drink- for gratitude, to say, "thanks for everything you went through," to say, "sorry for everything I put you through," and when "he sipped from it and looked toward me, and nodded [...] for me, then, as they began to play again, it glowed and shook above my brother's head like the very cup of trembling."

Nye's poem and Baldwin's short story are very much alike. They talk about the struggles that siblings face, and how they should go about smoothing out the rough patches that they'll encounter. Your family is your past and your future; you can't afford to lose sight of either of those things.