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James Baldwin literary aspects
Challenges faced by african americans during the 1950
James Baldwin literary aspects
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James Baldwin’s “Sonny’s Blues,” written in the 1950s is an examination of the relationship between two brothers that are on divergent paths in life. The older brother, the unnamed narrator, is a math teacher and his younger brother, Sonny, is a drug addict and a musician. Prior to the death of the narrator’s daughter, the brother, our narrator, had lost contact with Sonny, while Sonny spent time in jail for his drug addiction and the selling of drugs. The narrator is understandably upset with his younger brother because he thinks Sonny is not a functioning part of society and made the decision to be a drug addict. The two brothers are at odds, but when the narrator’s daughter dies from polio, he begins to question his life and the role that …show more content…
The 1950s was a trying time for African Americans, as they were faced with abject failure of the Harlem Renaissance. The narrator, having returned from World War II and settled into a semblance of middle class life, is alienated from his younger brother whom he sees as a drifter and ne’er do well that he must distance himself from. However, his anxiety regarding his life comes into focus when he reads a story in the newspaper about his brother, Sonny’s, arrest. He tells us that he is “scared” (1) for Sonny but the narrator then counters that by stating “I couldn’t believe it but what I mean by that is that I couldn’t find any room for it anywhere inside me. I kept it outside me for a long time” (1). It is this moment when the narrator realizes that even though he is afraid for his younger brother, he …show more content…
….Up there, keeping the beat with his whole body, wailing on the fiddle, his eyes half closed, he was listening to everything, but he was listening to Sonny. He was having a dialogue with Sonny. He wanted to Sonny to leave the shoreline and strike out for the deep water. He was Sonny’s witness……(you can add the rest here.) This interplay is perhaps the most significant in the text. When Creole asks Sonny to “strike out for the deep water,” he is asking Sonny to embrace the pain that comes with being a black man in the United States. In taking this risk, Sonny will not only understand himself but will also understand his culture. One item that should be noted is the name “Creole.” Usually, someone that is Creole is a hybrid person, some of a mixed background, the hybrid, the person that stands between black and white. It is therefore significant that Creole is Sonny’s witness in this journey to the discovery of who he is. But he is also the narrator’s witness. Creole becomes the medium through which Sonny and his brother will acknowledge their history and
The transition of being a black man in a time just after slavery was a hard one. A black man had to prove himself at the same time had to come to terms with the fact that he would never amount to much in a white dominated country. Some young black men did actually make it but it was a long and bitter road. Most young men fell into the same trappings as the narrator’s brother. Times were hard and most young boys growing up in Harlem were swept off their feet by the onslaught of change. For American blacks in the middle of the twentieth century, racism is another of the dark forces of destruction and meaninglessness which must be endured. Beauty, joy, triumph, security, suffering, and sorrow are all creations of community, especially of family and family-like groups. They are temporary havens from the world''s trouble, and they are also the meanings of human life.
Baldwin’s story presents the heart breaking portrayal of two brothers who have become disconnected through respective life choices. The narrator is the older brother who has grown past the depravity of his childhood poverty. The narrator’s profession as an algebra teacher reflects his need for a “black” and “white,” orderly outlook on life. The narrator believes he has escaped life’s sufferings until the death of his daughter and the troubling news about his brother being taken in for drug possession broadside him to the reality of life’s inevitable suffering. In contrast, his brother, Sonny has been unable to escape his childhood hardships and has ended up on the wrong side of the law. While their lives have taken ...
In conclusion, Sonny’s Blues depicts the love of a brother through the narrator, who at the beginning was disengaged, unsupportive, and emotionally distant. However, the turning point was when Grace died. This triggered a great turmoil of feelings that overflowed the narrator leading him to a major and impacting change. Instead, he turned into being involved, supportive, understanding, honest, and accepting of his brother Sonny; regardless of the reality that there was no guarantee his pain would not consume his life.
The narrator's disapproval of Sonny's decision to become a musician stems in part from his view of musicians in general. His experiences with musicians have led him to believe that they are unmotivated, drug users, seeking only escape from life. He does not really understand what motivates Sonny to play music until the afternoon before he accompanies Sonny to his performance at a club in Harlem. That afternoon, Sonny explains to him that music is his voice, his way of expressing his suffering and releasing his pent-up feelings.
Sonny the youngest of the brothers develops an increasing interest in music, jazz specifically. Which his brother does not approve, simply because he cannot understand what may push his brother to pursue a musical career “So you’ve got to listen. You’ve got to find a way to listen” (Sonny’s Blues 117). The race related difficulties of the time coupled with the toughness of life on Sonny, act on Sonny, finally leading him astray. After years of not seeing each other, Sonny’s brother see on the newspaper that his younger sibling went to jail, because of drug related issues. This man was really inflexible and it was really hard for him to accept that his brother was a convict: “I couldn’t believe it: but what I mean by that is that I couldn’t find any room fit it anywhere inside me.”(Sonny’s Blues 99). Nevertheless, what remains constant in the story until that point is the inability of the brother to get rid of his ignorant opinion about art and artist without even hear his brother play. Which is mainly the prejudicial issue present, along with the obvious racism existent in society. To prove why he has such a love for jazz, Sonny proposes his brother to go to see him play, and after the brother accedes and listen to his sibling’s music he understands how much suffering have Sonny gone through to get to where he is and that is the moment he realizes that they have more in common than what he thought: “it glowed and shook above my brother’s head like the very cup of trembling” (Sonny’s Blues
Sonny is initially characterized as a nuisance with no regard for the future, others, or his own well being, Sonny’s dream is to be a musician, but his caretakers, Isabel’s family, find out that he has been ditching school to spend more time with musicians. The narrator recalls Isabel’s mother’s reaction as “This scared her and she started to scream at him and what came up, once she began...was what sacrifices they were making to give Sonny a decent home and how little he appreciated it” (13). Typically, an unwavering drive to strive for one’s dream is highly respected and appreciated, but this ideal has been perverted by Sonny’s disregard for others. Despite Sonny’s scolding, the reader’s response is more of an agreement that Sonny has gone too far in his endeavors to attempt to become a jazz musician.This, in addition to his drug addiction, characterizes Sonny as a blind dreamer.
James Baldwin, the author of “Sonny Blues,” is an African American novelist and storywriter. In one of his most famous stories, “Sonny’s Blues,” he writes about a young boy that has an addiction to heroin. The story shows the relationship between two brothers and the problems that they, and their family have to endure. The brothers do not have a close bond during the time that the story takes place. James Baldwin, while growing up also dealt with many family issues. He didn’t know his biological father and had trouble being accepted into society being a homosexual African American. The boy portrayed as Sonny in “Sonny’s Blues” very closely resembles the way Baldwin must have been treated growing up. They both were shunned from society, and both struggled with the way their families interacted with one another. Baldwin could have purposely done this to illustrate what his childhood was like and express it to the world through the story that he wrote.
The short story opens up the readers to the Civil Rights Movement, taking place in the mid-20th century, where segregation was still an issue. The narrator and Sonny have grown up in a predominately black and very poor neighborhood in Harlem, New York. Although the Harlem Renaissance occurred more in the 1920s and 1930s, as opposed to the 1950s, the effects on the African American culture and the Harlem area were still prominent. The Great Depression and World War II played a huge role in the change of Harlem. Those who went into the war, specifically African Americans, returned home to the states with little credit or no respect. Harlem turned into a rundown and
To demonstrate, according to the narrator in Sonny's Blues by Mr. Baldwin, we discover the constant struggle of the normative expectations of today’s society to continue education after high school, the influences of racism, and the harsh outcomes of addiction can do to a person who simply wants to live the life they dream of. Therefore, with these amounts of harsh struggles that anyone in sonny’s position goes through can lead anyone to the deep line of hardships, struggles, and mental/emotional breakdowns. Additionally, in the position of Sonny’s, he had to endure these harsh struggles of life with the constant belittlement of the narrator, his environment, and the people around him, which lead to his own self-destruction “All they really knew were two darknesses, the darkness of their lives, which was now closing in on them, and the darkness of the movies, which had blinded them to that other darkness.”(Baldwin 561-562). Important to realize, due to all of these struggles, many individuals could not imagine how anyone could survive a daily lifestyle like this, but due to sonny, many individuals grow a better understanding of what a youngster in the deepest forms of poverty from Harlem, New York goes through on a daily
In "Sonny's Blues" James Baldwin presents an intergenerational portrait of suffering and survival within the sphere of black community and family. The family dynamic in this story strongly impacts how characters respond to their own pain and that of their family members. Examining the central characters, Mama, the older brother, and Sonny, reveals that each assumes or acknowledges another's burden and pain in order to accept his or her own situation within an oppressive society. Through this sharing each character is able to achieve a more profound understanding of his own suffering and attain a sharper, if more precarious, notion of survival.
After discovering what has happened to Sonny, the narrator makes it seem as if he does not care and does not want interference in the life he has worked so hard to create. This is proven when the narrator discusses what has happened to Sonny with one of his brother’s friends. As shown through this quote, the narrator is not concerned about what has happened to his brother and believes it is not his responsibili...
“Sonny’s Blues” revolves around the narrator as he learns who his drug-hooked, piano-playing baby brother, Sonny, really is. The author, James Baldwin, paints views on racism, misery and art and suffering in this story. His written canvas portrays a dark and continual scene pertaining to each topic. As the story unfolds, similarities in each generation can be observed. The two African American brothers share a life similar to that of their father and his brother. The father’s brother had a thirst for music, and they both travelled the treacherous road of night clubs, drinking and partying before his brother was hit and killed by a car full of white boys. Plagued, the father carried this pain of the loss of his brother and bitterness towards the whites to his grave. “Till the day he died he weren’t sure but that every white man he saw was the man that killed his brother.”(346) Watching the same problems transcend onto the narrator’s baby brother, Sonny, the reader feels his despair when he tries to relate the same scenarios his father had, to his brother. “All that hatred down there”, he said “all that hatred and misery and love. It’s a wonder it doesn’t blow the avenue apart.”(355) He’s trying to relate to his brother that even though some try to cover their misery with doing what others deem as “right,” others just cover it with a different mask. “But nobody just takes it.” Sonny cried, “That’s what I’m telling you! Everybody tries not to. You’re just hung up on the way some people try—it’s not your way!”(355) The narrator had dealt with his own miseries of knowing his father’s plight, his Brother Sonny’s imprisonment and the loss of his own child. Sonny tried to give an understanding of what music was for him throughout thei...
In conclusion, the short story "Sonny's Blues" by James Baldwin brings out two main themes: irony and suffering. You can actually feel the pain that Baldwin's characters experience; and distinguish the two different lifestyles of siblings brought up in the same environment. The older brother remaining nameless is a fabulous touch that really made me want to read on. This really piqued my interest and I feel it can lead to many discussions on why this technique was used. I really enjoyed this story; it was a fast and enjoyable reading. Baldwin keeps his readers thinking and talking long after they have finished reading his stories. His writing technique is an art, which very few, if any, can duplicate.
America has often been thought as the “land of opportunities”, however, the majority of the people who enjoy those opportunities are light skin Americans. Even after the civil war, African Americans suffered socially. An example of how Africans Americans suffer socially is found in Sonny’s Blues. The narrator, a teacher in Harlem, has escaped the ghetto, creating a stable and secure life for himself despite the destructive pressures that he sees destroying so many young blacks. He sees African American adolescents discovering
The narrator allows Sonny to move into his apartment. By allowing Sonny to live with him he has allowed to trust him again. For example, the narrator explains, “The idea of searching Sonny’s room made me still. I scarcely dared to admit to myself what I’d be searching for. I didn’t know what I’d do if I found it. Or if I didn’t” (pg. 91). This shows how the narrator had the opportunity to search his brother’s room, but had the ability not to. Tension grew among brothers while living under one roof. This starts the climax of both arguing in the apartment. The narrator doesn’t understand why his brother wants to be a musician. This argument was built of emotion both had and not yet discussed among each other. Such as the narrator expressing his anger towards his brother’s drug use and Sonny’s frustration towards the narrator not understanding his plan to become a jazz musician. For example, the narrator states, “I realized, with this mocking look, that there stood between us, forever, beyond the power of time or forgiveness, the fact that I had held silence – so long! – when he had needed human speech to help him” (pg.94). The argument with his brother made him realize that he abandon his younger brother when he needed him the most. He realized that if he would have spoken out and talk about his drug use that he wouldn’t have to go