Motifs In Star Wars And Sonny's Blues

Short stories often share parallel plots, themes, characters, and conflicts. For example, have you ever seen a Disney Princess film? How they all appear to have a quest, and fairy godmother or an evil stepmother, and prince charming. Unquestionable they all have changed details and settings, but in the end if you take a deeper look, it is all the same backbone of a story. These repetitive concepts are known as motifs. Motifs are in movies, TV shows, short stories and almost every other kind of fiction. Motifs are found in all the elements of fictions, from characters to plot. Think of Star Wars and Star Trek, what is the difference? Sure there are differences, but they share many motifs. They say “history repeats its self,” the saying should

go more like “fiction repeats its self.”
In this essay I will be analyzing the motifs shared between the short stories; Sonny’s Blues written by James Baldwin, I Stand Here Ironing by Tillie Olsen, and Girl authored by Jamaica Kincaid. The three motifs I have found that these stories convey are; family relationship and the struggle of roles, bad blind the good, and that no one is perfect.
All three of these stories deal with family relationships and their struggles, Sonny’s Blues is a story of two brothers. I Stand Here Ironing and Girl are both stories with mother daughter relationships. Everyone has a family, we all know the sayings ‘blood is thicker than water” and “family is forever” but we all know that it is hard to get along with people especially when you see them all the time. Sure siblings might bicker and parents might argue, but in these stories the families deal with bigger problems. In the story Sonny’s Blues, the narrator and his brother named Sonny who was a heroin addict. The short story of I Stand Here Ironing, Emily’s mother was a young mother who didn’t know how to raise herself let alone her own child. Girl also shows the story of a mother and daughter whose conflict is the time periods and standards are different, there for the mother is “educating her daughter how to not be a “slut.”
In two of these stories another motif is shared, bad blinds good, I Stand Here Ironing and Sonny’s Blues the antagonist has a gift a hidden talent that the other family members fail to see because they choose to focus on the bad, throughout the course of both stories the characters work to resolve their differences and are finally able to see and experience a little bit of what their family member has to offer the world.

In the commentary article written by Jack Coulehan, the quote “the girl is a natural performer, a wonderful comedienne, who now is in demand throughout the city and state” this quote shows that other people besides Emily’s mother can see that she has a wondrous talent. Later in the story the mother finalizes understands that she expected to much from Emily, because she had Emily so young she sent her away to figure things out for herself. The mother says “I was a young mother, I was a distracted mother…my wisdom came too late.” Because Emily never showed love to her mother or other siblings, her mother only saw the disconnection, but really she was missing that Emily was scared to love the person that sent her away. As the iron, the mother wants to fix the wrinkled spots of the dress, which is a symbol for Emily. To Emily the wrinkles don’t change who she is, Emily loves to preform, and views herself as the same person no matter what circumstances she goes through, such as the experiences she had in her childhood. The mother comes to the realization at the end of the story of why her daughter doesn’t show affection, when the old man living in the back said “you should smile at Emily more” because she had not shown Emily attention or love when she was younger Emily never expected or understood the unconditional love of a mother to a daughter. In the short story Sonny’s Blues, the narrator and Sonny grew up close, as normal brothers do, but as the narrator reads the newspaper he gets some unsettling news about Sonny. Sonny’s use of drugs and criminal

history has built a wall between the brothers. The narrator builds up hatred of his brothers actions, blinding him to all the wonderful things Sonny has to offer, his music. When the narrator finally goes to see his brother preform, he says “he has to fill it, this instrument, with the breath of life, his own.” He understands now all the hardships and persistence and falls Sonny has had in his battle with drugs. Through the music Sonny is able to convey his story, his own breath of life. As similar as these two works are they have key differences, besides the obvious brothers verses mother and daughter relationship, the way that the relation start are different. In I Stand Here Ironing, Emily and her mother never connected while Sonny and his older brother were close. In Sonny’s Blues the narrators felt that it was his duty to protect his little brother, while Emily’s mother never feels the protective instinct of a mother.
And the last major motif that these short stories; Sonny’s Blues, I Stand Here Ironing, and Girl all carry, is that no one is perfect, both the narrator and the antagonist have issues. In short stories we often see a good and evil duo of characters. Rather in these stories all of the characters are round dynamic, and have problems of their own that often overlap to create the major conflict. For example, in Sonny’s Blues, the narrator deals with the death of his daughter, which distracts him from his brother in jail. In I Stand Here Ironing the mother deals with the challenges of raising a child at a young age while Emily struggles with forgiving and loving her mother, seeing that her mother loves and gives more affection to her other children more. And in Girl the mother is teaching more like demanding properness’ out of her daughter, while she is trying to understand he true self, and explore new ideas outside of her mother’s traditional beliefs. The stories all share the conflicts of each character but do not all have the same problems, Sonny’s Blues deals with death and bad decisions, while I Stand Here Ironing conveys distance between people who live so closely to one another, and Girl shows the differences between generations and the fact that daughters don’t have to become their mothers.