Concept of Freedom in Postwar America and The Theme of Freedom in Sonny Blues

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DatePart 1. Concept of Freedom in Postwar America.
According to Fromm, freedom is the power of oneself and has no association with a higher power. The ability to exercise his full capacities, will, and authentic self was his approach towards freedom. He believed a free man could like the art to have or be something. In his view, freedom gave an individual the power to connect with the world without eliminating individuality. The new approach towards what freedom was, was centered on the new view of human nature and consciousness for individuals. Fromm explained that freedom could either be positive or negative. In positive freedom, one looks and gets into it while individuals flee from negative freedom. He criticized the view by a man that is well fed, well clothed, and surrendering freedom to dictators like slaves did a form of automaton without freedom (Fenichel).
Fromm argued that the only way a man can give himself freedom is by addressing the gap between intellectual-technical over maturity and emotional backwardness. He supports Baldwin's perspective that one needed no big machine to be un-free when it simple to be asleep, apartheid, and even simpler not to want to be free. Given negative freedom, Fromm observes an increasing sense of alienation that did to satisfy human hunger for connection to the world beyond them (Deslandes). For a positive relationship between a man and the world, the individual needed to show solidarity with all other individuals and his work, activity, and love. It was viewed to unite a man to the world as a free and independent individual. People became free as soon as they wished to be free. In his view, freedom was controlled by political, social, economic, and psychological forces. Freedom was to come from one's acceptance that they needed to be free since a person not determined to be free cant be set free. The bosses were required to control those they oppressed as long as the oppressed was comfortable with it.
Part 2. The theme of Freedom in Sonny Blues.
I will use the short story Sonny's Blues by James Baldwin to analyze the theme of freedom as manifested. In this short story, sonny is hounded by poverty, his black color, and community confines. As a black American, sonny, confined in the hardships and...