In the stories, “The Death of Ivan Ilyich” written by Leo Tolstoy and “Sonny’s Blues” written by James Baldwin these representative narratives lead their readers to conclusions about the thematic/values issues they have raised. At the end of both these stories, they both have that same theme and meaning of what both authors are trying to tell the readers about life, and how much people should appreciate the time that we have, and whom you are spending the cherished moments together. Each of these stories come to a reasonable conclusion on all the problems the characters had no choice to face the hardships of their lives that made them all realized and glanced back on how thankful they were. In “The Death of Ivan Ilyich,” Leo Tolstoy is …show more content…
Ivan Ilyich was not the only one who did not appreciate the time and people in his life until the conclusion of the story. What we know about “Sonny’s Blues” is about two brothers who have never genuinely agreed completely with another. They both didn’t easily understand one another. Sonny had battled his hardships of life and ended up wanting the attempt to hang himself. You can tell right away how week Sonny was at the beginning of this story and how slowly he grows stronger and even into a different character. When Sonny leaves, everything becomes uneasily for the narrator. Nothing seems to be working out for him. He faced a terrifying fight with Sonny, “I started down the steps, whistling to keep from crying, I kept whistling to myself, You going to need me, baby, one of these cold rainy days.” (Page 55) The narrator knew that Sonny needs him like how his uncle needed the narrator’s father. When the narrator found out about his uncle that died, he compared his father's and uncle’s relationship with Sonny and realized that he was running out of time experiencing precious moments with Sonny. He never realized how grateful he was to have his brother Sonny around and he would do whatever he can to take care of him so he would not feel the pain as his father sadly experienced. From the hardships that the narrator had faced losing his daughter that is one of the worst experiences to happen to a parent is their child dying before them knowing that his daughter will not be able to experience and enjoying the world to achieve her accomplishments. The thought about Sonny that he thought Sonny was putting his life away with music and the fights that they had. However, Sonny showed him the value of music, and that it is what makes Sonny contented
Sonny’s brother has been distant towards him, but recently, he has been trying to understand him and help him. Sonny decides to take his brother to a concert to see if he will understand what he is trying to convey through music. Sonny hasn’t played the piano for “over a year” and he is a little bit rusty (147). Sonny also says he isn’t on “much better terms with life” than he was a year ago (147). In a way though, he is in a much better place, because his brother is there for him. When Sonny starts to play the piano, he is a little bit nervous, and he does not really feel the music that he is playing. After a while though, he starts to loosen up and play his heart out. The tune he is playing is no longer just a song; it is “Sonny’s Blues” (148). The music he plays “fills the air with life, his life,” and Sonny’s brother finally understands “he could help us be free if we would listen, “ and that Sonny “would never be free until we did” (148). By the end of the story, Sonny achieves his goal of communicating his problems though his
In James Baldwin’s “Sonny’s Blues,” the unspoken brotherly bond between the narrator and his younger brother Sonny is illustrated through the narrator’s point of view. The two brothers have not spoken in years until the narrator receives a letter from Sonny after his daughter dies. He takes this moment as an important sign from Sonny and feels the need to respond. While both Sonny and the narrator live in separate worlds, all Sonny needs is a brother to care for him while the narrator finds himself in the past eventually learning his role as an older brother.
As "Sonny's Blues" opens, the narrator tells of his discovery that his younger brother has been arrested for selling and using heroin. Both brothers grew up in Harlem, a neighborhood rife with poverty and despair. Though the narrator teaches school in Harlem, he distances himself emotionally from the people who live there and their struggles and is somewhat judgmental and superior. He loves his brother but is distanced from him as well and judgmental of his life and decisions. Though Sonny needs for his brother to understand what he is trying to communicate to him and why he makes the choices he makes, the narrator cannot or will not hear what Sonny is trying to convey. In distancing himself from the pain of upbringing and his surroundings, he has insulated himself from the ability to develop an understanding of his brother's motivations and instead, his disapproval of Sonny's choice to become a musician and his choices regarding the direction of his life in general is apparent. Before her death, his mother spoke with him regarding his responsibilities to Sonny, telling him, "You got to hold on to your brother...and don't let him fall, no matter what it looks like is happening to him and no matter how evil you get with him...you may not be able to stop nothing from happening. But you got to let him know you're there" (87) His unwillingness to really hear and understand what his brother is trying to tell him is an example of a character failing to act in good faith.
The theme of "Sonny's Blues" by James Baldwin focuses on whether a person should be conventional in making decisions for their life, or if they should follow their heart and do what is right for them. A person begins with strengths, many of which they lose along the way. At some point along their heroic journey a person may regain their strengths and develop new ones. Each phase of this journey will have an effect on them and others around them.
In the story, Sonny’s Blues, James Baldwin uses music, jazz, and hymns to shape the story and show how it shapes Sonny’s life and how music is inherent to his survival. All of this is seen through the older brother’s eyes; the older brother is the narrator and the reader begins to understand Sonny through the older brother’s perspective. Baldwin writes the story like a jazz song to make a story out of his father’s past and his brother’s career choice and puts them together, going back and forth, until it creates a blending of histories and lives. He shows how the father’s past is similar to the narrator’s life; the older brother has conflicts with his younger brother, Sonny. Music heals the relationship.
All of humanity suffers at one point or another during the course of their lives. It is in this suffering, this inevitable pain, that one truly experiences life. While suffering unites humankind, it is how we choose to cope with this pain that defines us as individuals. The question becomes do we let suffering consume us, or do we let it define our lives? Through James Baldwin’s story, “Sonny’s Blues”, the manner by which one confronts the light and darkness of suffering determines whether one is consumed by it, or embraces it in order to “survive.” Viewing a collection of these motifs, James Baldwin’s unique perspective on suffering as a crucial component of human development becomes apparent. It is through his compassionate portrayal of life’s inescapable hardships that one finds the ability to connect with humankind’s general pool of hardship. James Baldwin’s “Sonny’s Blues” makes use of the motifs of darkness and light to illuminate the universal human condition of suffering and its coping mechanisms.
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.
With the narrator having a responsibility to take care of his brother, he consistently forces the fact that he wants his brother to be well off and not care about his passion in music. The older they got, the more they drove away from each other because of the fact the narrator becomes overly protective with Sonny, and uses a “tough love” strategy though it does not making any positive effect. After they took some time apart, they both realized they cannot emotionally make it in this world without one
James Baldwin’s short story “Sonny’s Blues” illustrates the inner struggle of breaking the hold of lifestyles unfamiliar to those normally accepted by society. Through the use of common fictitious tools such as plot, characters, conflict, and symbolic irony, Baldwin is able to explore the complex difficulties that challenge one in the acceptance of differences in one another. This essay will attempt to understand these thematic concepts through the use of such devises essential in fiction, as well as to come to an understanding of how the particular elements of fiction assist the author in exploring the conflict.
James Baldwin, author of Sonny’s Blues, was born in Harlem, NY in 1924. During his career as an essayist, he published many novels and short stories. Growing up as an African American, and being “the grandson of a slave” (82) was difficult. On a day to day basis, it was a constant battle with racial discrimination, drugs, and family relationships. One of Baldwin’s literature pieces was Sonny’s Blues in which he describes a specific event that had a great impact on his relationship with his brother, Sonny. Having to deal with the life-style of poverty, his relationship with his brother becomes affected and rivalry develops. Conclusively, brotherly love is the theme of the story. Despite the narrator’s and his brother’s differences, this theme is revealed throughout the characters’ thoughts, feelings, actions, and dialogue. Therefore, the change in the narrator throughout the text is significant in understanding the theme of the story. It is prevalent to withhold the single most important aspect of the narrator’s life: protecting his brother.
The narrator in James Baldwin’s short story, “Sonny’s Blues”, at first glance seems to be a static character, trying to forget the past and constantly demeaning his brother’s choices in life. Throughout the story, readers see how the narrator has tried to forget the past. However, his attempt to forget the past soon took a turn. When the narrator’s daughter died, he slowly started to change. As the narrator experiences these changes in his life, he becomes a dynamic character.
"Sonny's Blues" is filled with examples of music and how it makes things better. The schoolboy, the barmaid, the mother, the brother, the uncle, the street revivalists, all use music to create a moment when life isn't so ugly, even though the world still waits outside and trouble stretches above. Music and the tale it tells provide hope and joy; instead of being the instrument of Sonny's destruction, introducing him to the world of drugs, music is his way out of some of the ugliness. For Sonny and the other characters in this story, music is a bastion against the despair that pervades stunted lives; it is the light that guides them from the darkness without hope.
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.
“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...
The short story Sonny’s Blues was written by an author name James Baldwin in (1957). The narrative of the story talks about his younger brother who was busted for heroin. The younger brother is known as Sonny’s. The narrator continue with his normal life as a school teacher as if he did not just find out terrible news about his younger brother. However, he could not get the fact that his younger brother was busted for heroin out his mind. The author never wrote Sonny until the author daughter had gotten really sick. From there you can see how the two brothers was related and what they have been through in their life. We learned that the brothers had lost both their parents. As the author continue he describe his father to be a drunken man who