Analysis Questions
1. Define the "blues" as it is illustrated when Sonny plays it at the end of the story "Sonny's Blues."
2. What does the narrator learn from Sonny's music?

Interpretation Questions
3. Identify the key terms that seem to capture the experience of many Black Americans locked in lives of poverty, abuse, and racism.
4. What does the narrator learn from his younger brother? In what sense is the older brother prejudiced by his own formal education?

Evaluation Questions
5. What criticism might Baldwin intended in his notice, following the completion of the final musical set, that "there was a lot of applause and some of it was real"?
6. To what degree might Baldwin be accused of legitimatising Sonny's lifestyle and its complementary questionable and illegal activities?