All 9 Uses
blues
in
How to Read Literature Like a Professor
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- Either that or Kip has a vision of St. Abillard (any saint will do, but our imaginary author picked a comparatively obscure one), whose face appears on one of the red, yellow, or blue balloons.†
Chpt 1 *
- At the end of James Baldwin's story "Sonny's Blues" (1957), the narrator sends a drink up to the bandstand as a gesture of solidarity and acceptance to his brilliantly talented but wayward brother, Sonny, who takes a sip and, as he launches into the next song, sets the drink on the piano, where it shimmers "like the very cup of trembling."†
Chpt 7
- Happily, in the case of "Sonny's Blues," the story is so heavily anthologized that it's almost impossible not to find the answer—the phrase comes from Isaiah 51:17.†
Chpt 7
- Every American should know enough of the blues to understand exactly what keys and locks signify, and to blush when they're referred to.†
Chpt 16 *
- James Baldwin's wonderful short story "Sonny's Blues" deals with a rather uptight math teacher in Harlem in the 1950s whose brother serves time in prison for heroin possession.†
Chpt 25
- And two or three times I've had a recent student in said substance abuse classes show up at discussions of "Sonny's Blues," very earnestly saying something like, "You should never give alcohol to a recovering addict."†
Chpt 25
- Sonny's Blues" is about redemption, but not the one students have been conditioned to expect.†
Chpt 25
- Only the blue was veiled with a haze of light gold, as it is sometimes in early summer.†
Chpt 27
- What nice eyes he had, small, but such a dark blue!†
Chpt 27
Definitions:
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(1)
(blues as in: sings the blues) a style of music that originated among African Americans at the beginning of the 20th century; has a "soulful" or melancholy sound from repeated use of blue notesBlue notes are notes that are sung or played slightly lower than they would be in the major scale—especially the flattened third, fifth, and seventh degrees.
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(2)
(blues as in: feeling the blues) feelings of sadness or depression
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(3)
(meaning too common or too rare to warrant focus) "Blues" more commonly describes shades of the color.