The Significance Of Music In Sonny's Blues By James Baldwin

640 Words2 Pages

he title of Sonny’s Blues gives away one of the story’s main focuses: music and what it represents to different people. James Baldwin creates characters who see music, especially jazz music, much differently from and who represent the views of people in the real world. Baldwin explores the good and bad views of music by creating a character who lives because of music and characters who believe music is evil and a nuisance. To Sonny, music represents the goodness in life and the joy that life can give us. When Sonny is staying with Isabel and her parents, the narrator says that, “ Sonny was at that piano playing for his life,” this means that Sonny was using music as an escape from the darkness around him. Sonny plays music as a way to cope with the suffering that he has been through. He tells the narrator that heroin and …show more content…

However, throughout the story the narrator’s thoughts on the music begin to shift to a more positive view. As Sonny explains the ways of coping to the narrator, the narrator begins to understand why Sonny needs music in his life and during Sonny’s performance fully understands the meaning of music in Sonny and his life. The narrator has flashbacks of his life and the feelings that were associated with those events while he listens to Sonny’s Blues and becomes aware of the struggle going on on the stage. In this event, the narrator turns from a negative view on music to an absolute positive view on the importance of music in people’s lives. Sonny’s Blues is a story all about music and what it represents in the lives of different people. It varys from the positive view of Sonny to the negative views of Isabel and her parents. However, the narrator of the story switches from being negative to positive as he becomes more educated. These views cover how many people view music and how it differently impacts

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