James Baldwin is a renowned author best known for his work of essays, books and short stories, particularly those which dwell deeply into important social and psychological issues of discrimination, gender inequality, homophobia and so on. One of Mr. Baldwin's most appreciated literary works is the short story 'Sonny's Blues' which focuses on two brothers who grew up together but take different paths in life. The story follows the narrator learning about his brother Sonny's incarceration due to the use and selling of drugs until his brother gets parole. Throughout the story, we learn about the relationship between the pair and are able to witness the narrators ultimate understanding of Sonny and his ambition. As we continue to observe the …show more content…
impressive short story, we find the most recurring theme to be that of sorrow. From the very beginning of the tale, the sorrow is palpable through the unnamed narrator's discovery of Sonny's incarceration, and moreover through the atmosphere created by Mr. Baldwin. The most prominent message that can be deciphered and recognized in Sonny's Blues is that the sadness and sorrow that one experiences in their life can bring about many obstacles but it can be countered and used for something greater by a search for understanding and acceptance. James Baldwin establishes this implication through the use of his characters; the narrator, Sonny, and the singer seen on the street. All these characters experience sorrow and sadness in their life and take different paths but ultimately use their emotion for something greater and more productive whether it's through music or teaching. Furthermore, each character has their own unique way to express their emotions and undergo various challenges and obstacles to reach where they do, but they ultimately reach their positions through combatting their sadness and sorrow through acceptance and understanding. As aforementioned, the theme of gloom is seen through the characters as well as through the atmosphere of the setting created by the author, Mr. James Baldwin. The narrator is understood to have had a difficult life due to discrimination, lack of utility, curve balls that life has thrown at him (the death of his parents which leaves him responsible for Sonny), etc. Despite all the grief he has experienced and all the melancholy he has seen, he decides to combat it in the quickest and most productive way that he knows, with the help of education he becomes a teacher. The narrator knows that his life is not destined to be filled with unhappiness or desolation, and so from a young age decides to oppose those negative forces making a conscious decision to help or enlighten other children like him do so in the future. The narrator had earlier accepted that suffering was inevitable and this is reiterated in the story as the narrator talks with Sonny in his house, after Sonny invites him to come and watch him play. The narrator tells Sonny “But there’s no way not to suffer, is there Sonny?”, and Sonny agrees with his statement. This shows that the narrator accepted this before Sonny did, but that Sonny was now accepting this concept. As they continue their discussion, the narrator confused asks his brother “But we just agreed, that there is no way not to suffer. Isn’t it better then, just to - take it?” Sonny’s response, “ But nobody just takes it, that’s what I’m telling you! Everybody tries not to…” illuminates the audience with the message of combating suffering, although there is no escape from it. Here, we understand that the narrators way of combating suffering, was not the same way Sonny had intended to fight it. In order to oppose his suffering, the narrator chose education and a well earning profession. This choice is seen at a young age, after his mother dies the narrator seems frustrated that, in his opinion Sonny is not taking his future seriously by aspiring to be a jazz musician. When the narrator mentions his past, he doesn’t refer to it as his alone but Sonny’s as well. Both the boys suffered similar pain and sorrow, but as observed they did not take the same paths despite this. Some of the suffering and sorrow that the narrator had to endure was, the limitations imposed on him due to the color of his skin, the passing of both his parents, the passing of his daughter, the helplessness at the sight of children just like him destroying their life due to various reasons, his strained relationship with Sonny; the only family member remaining, etc. I believe that as the narrator had accepted that suffering and pain was inevitable at an earlier age, he was able to channel his suffering and pain into his education, ultimately leading to him becoming a teacher. Sonny’s character contradicts the narrators as, he suffers the same way the narrator does but accepts his suffering too late.
When Sonny talks to his brother about suffering and all that he went through that he couldn’t and still wasn’t able to talk about, he perfectly explains where he had went wrong in his life. He says, “But nobody just takes it, 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!” The narrator’s way of dealing with his suffering is beneficial and not poisonous to himself or others, but Sonny’s way of dealing with everything was not the same way. Sonny’s decision was not to do whatever he could in spite of the bad cards he was dealt in life, but to try and quit the game by escaping it. Sonny had originally tried to escape through the form of the military, but when he returned he realized he was back to where he started and that he didn’t actually escape, only made a circle. After this realization, he decided to do the contrary of what the narrator did and survive with whatever he thought he could. After Sonny’s is released from his incarceration, we understand that he truly understands what and how he had lived before. He tells the narrator, “But I can’t forget - where I’ve been. I don’t mean just the physical place I’ve been, I mean where I’ve been. And what I’ve been”, and then continues to talk about some things he has done with little detail. Another piece of their conversation is …show more content…
Sonny saying, “I’ve been something I didn’t realize, didn’t know I could be. Didn’t know anybody could be.” Both these dialogues shared between the two brothers shows that Sonny has finally analyzed his actions and accepted that his way of living wasn’t in fact living, but merely surviving. Here, we observe Sonny accepting what he has done, and that there is no escape from it, and then consciously decide to continue to struggle against the hate and suffering in the world in a positive way. In respect to the way the characters channel their emotions into beneficiary methods, it can be seen most clearly in Sonny.
When the narrator goes to see Sonny play after their talk, he truly sees Sonny for the first time. His face is empty yet so passionate, pouring all his emotions into his instrument. The narrator hears his pain and his suffering as they play the blues and the conversations the players have with each other, with their respective instruments. When Sonny plays his music, he pours his soul into it; it seems that Sonny has managed to find his escape even if it’s only momentary. It is when the narrator hears Sonny play that he truly understands his brother for the first time. A minor character that escapes her life momentarily as Sonny does, is the singer on the street. When Sonny and the narrator are talking amongst each other, Sonny tells his brother, “While I was downstairs before, on my way here, listening to that women sing, it struck me all of a sudden how much suffering she must have had to go through - to sing like that. It’s repulsive to think you have to suffer that much.” Sonny, a person who doesn’t even know this woman can feel her suffering through the notes that she sings; a quality that they both share. As aforementioned, the narrator decided earlier to focus on his education in spite of the suffering, and successfully became a
teacher. In conclusion, James Baldwin’s short story Sonny’s Blues perfectly portrays the message that, one can always turn their struggles and sorrows into something greater. In other words, one can take the sourest lemons that life has to offer and turn it into something resembling lemonade
Sonny’s Blues is first-person narration by the elder brother of the musician struggling with heroin addiction and issues with law. However, on closer inspection it appears that Sonny’s unnamed brother is also very troubled. His difficulties cannot easily be perceived and recognized especially by the character himself. The story gives accounts of the problems Sonny’s brother has with taking responsibility, understanding and respecting his younger brother’s lifestyle.
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.
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.
According to his brother, who narrates "Sonny's Blues," Sonny was a bright-eyed young man full of gentleness and privacy. "When he was about as old as the boys in my classes his face had been bright and open, there was a lot of copper in it; and he'd had wonderfully direct brown eyes, a great gentleness and privacy. I wondered what he looked like now" (Baldwin 272). Something happened to Sonny, as it did to most of the young people growing up in Harlem. His physical journey growing up in the streets caused a great deal of inner turmoil about whom he was and what kind of life he was to have. One thing for sure, by the time his mother died, Sonny was ready to get out of Harlem. " 'I ain't learning nothing in school,' he said. 'Even when I go.' He turned away from me and opened the window and threw his cigarette out into the narrow alley. I watched his back. 'At least, I ain't learning nothing you'd want me to learn.' He slammed the window so hard I thought the glass would fly out, and turned back to me. 'And I'm sick of the stink of these garbage cans!' " (Baldwin 285).
In James Baldwin's "Sonny's Blues" a pair of brothers try to make sense of the urban decay that surrounds and fills them. This quest to puzzle out the truth of the shadows within their hearts and on the streets takes on a great importance. Baldwin meets his audience at a halfway mark: Sonny has already fallen into drug use, and is now trying to return to a clean life with his brother's aid. The narrator must first attempt to understand and make peace with his brother's drug use before he can extend his help and heart to him. Sonny and his brother both struggle for acceptance. Sonny wants desperately to explain himself while also trying to stay afloat and out of drugs. Baldwin amplifies these struggles with a continuous symbolic motif of light and darkness. Throughout "Sonny's Blues" there is a pervasive sense of darkness which represents the reality of life on the streets of Harlem. The darkness is sometimes good but usually sobering and sometimes fearful, just as reality may be scary. Light is not simply a stereotypical good, rather it is a complex consciousness, an awareness of the dark, and somehow, within that knowledge there lies hope. Baldwin's motif of light and darkness in "Sonny's Blues" is about the sometimes painful nature of reality and the power gained from seeing it.
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.
In James Baldwin’s short story, Sonny’s Blues, he describes a story of pain and prejudice. The theme of suffering makes the reader relate to it. The story is told from the realistic point of view of Sonny’s brother. The setting and time of the story also has great significance to the story. From beginning to end, the story is well developed.
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.
Several passages found throughout "Sonny's Blues" indicate that as a whole, the neighborhood of Harlem is in the turmoil of a battle between good and evil. The narrator describes Sonny's close encounters with the evil manifested in drugs and crime, as well as his assertive attempts at distancing himself from the darker side. The streets and communities of Harlem are described as being a harsh environment which claims the lives of many who have struggled against the constant enticement of emotional escape through drugs, and financial escape through crime. Sonny's parents, just like the others in Harlem, have attempted to distance their children from the dark sides of their community, but inevitably, they are all aware that one day each child will face a decisionb for the first time. Each child will eventually join the ranks of all the other members of society fighting a war against evil at the personal level so cleanly brought to life by James Baldwin. Amongst all the chaos, the reader is introduced to Sonny's special secret weapon against the pressures of life: Jazz. Baldwin presents jazz as being a two-edged sword capable of expressing emotions like no other method, but also a presenting grave danger to each individual who bears it. Throughout the the story, the reader follows Sonny's past and present skirmishes with evil, his triumphs, and his defeats. By using metaphorical factors such as drugs and jazz in a war-symbolizing setting, Baldwin has put the focus of good and evil to work at the heart of "Sonny's Blues."
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" 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.
The short story Sonny’s Blues by James Baldwin is written in first person through the narrator. This story focuses on the narrator’s brother sonny and their relationship throughout the years. This story is taken place in Harlem, New York in the 1950s. The narrator is a high school algebra teacher and just discovered his brother in the newspaper. This story includes the traditional elements to every story, which consist of the exposition, conflict, rising action, climax, falling action, and the resolution.