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In Sonny's Blues, what could the "housing projects jutted up out of [the streets] now like rocks in the middle of a boiling sea" mean/symbolize?

The housing projects in the story, like public housing in many cities, are isolated places, even though they might be in the middle of a city; they are isolated by poverty and usually by race. The image this gives us is of danger all around and no means of escape, which is reinforced in the same part of the story, in which Baldwin speaks of the boys being "surrounded by danger" (7) and being like animals who have to gnaw off a limb to get out of a trap.  These are mean streets, "vivid, killing streets" (7). And whether one stays on the rocks and is subjected to the stormy and rough waves or tries to get off the rocks and leave, it's a very risky business, life-destroying for many.  Reading even a bit more into this passage, I think it also conveys an image of a good place for a shipwreck, running aground these rocks, with sailors lost, a ship destroyed, and no means of getting away.  Anyone who has been placed in a project like this could very well feel shipwrecked.  This is a dark image, contributing to all the darkness in the story. 

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