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Literary analysis of toni morrison
A social influence on individual behavior
Literary analysis of toni morrison
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The stakes are very clear. The narrator is trying his best to live a traditional, stable life. Although white America may consider him to be an “outsider,” the narrator still strives to be upwardly mobile, to create a stable family environment even within the slums of Harlem. Sonny, however, has no interest in such things. If the narrator is an outsider to “traditional” America, then Sonny is the outsider of the outsiders: jazz music, in combination with his heroin use, makes him an outcast within the black community of his time. Nonetheless, Sonny stands by his choices. He sticks with jazz music and leaves Harlem, leaves the projects; and he does not return until he has cycled through heroin addiction and become clean again.
Once he has become
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clean, Sonny visits the narrator at his home. After meeting his extended family, he makes a suggestion to the narrator – that they should go to a club downtown, where the narrator can watch Sonny play his music. The narrator is hesitant, but says that “I sensed, I don't know how, that I couldn't possibly say No” (Baldwin 855). He accompanies Sonny, and at the club he is introduced to his brother’s own extended family; a circle of musicians (among them a father-figure named Creole) who revere Sonny’s inborn musical talent. The narrator continues: They were going to play soon and Creole installed me, by myself, at a table in a dark corner. Then I watched them, Creole, and the little black man, and Sonny, and the others, while they horsed around, standing just below the bandstand. The light from the bandstand spilled just a little short of them and, watching them laughing and gesturing and moving about, I had the feeling that they, nevertheless, were being most careful not step into that circle of light too suddenly: that if they moved into the light too suddenly, without thinking, they would perish in flame (Baldwin 860). As with the depiction of the narrator’s and Sonny’s childhood home, we are presented with the image of a safe circle of light, surrounded by a wider darkness. Baldwin’s use of imagery is clear; the music club is now Sonny’s safe circle of light: it is now his home, as the projects are home to the narrator. As the scene at the club progresses, the narrator begins to see that both types of home are equally valid. Sonny enters the circle of light. He falters in his playing at first, but then he starts to play the blues: Then they all gathered around Sonny and Sonny played. Every now and again one of them seemed to say, Amen. Sonny's fingers filled the air with life, his life. But that life contained so many others. And Sonny went all the way back, he really began with the spare, flat statement of the opening phrase of the song. Then he began to make it his. It was very beautiful because it wasn't hurried and it was no longer a lament. I seemed to hear with what burning he had made it his, with what burning we had yet to make it ours, how we could cease lamenting. Freedom lurked around us and I understood, at last, that he could help us to be free if we would listen, that he would never be free until we did (Baldwin 865). Within the circle of light that Sonny’s playing creates, there are no longer any divisions of class, or of rich or poor, or of right or wrong. There is simply freedom, and significantly, the narrator says that there is freedom for “us” – as in, not just freedom for Sonny, but freedom for himself as well. This is an important distinction. For in the end, Sonny’s Blues is not just the story of Sonny; it is also – or perhaps mainly – the story of his brother, the narrator. Sonny remains steadfast in his outsider-ness; he does not apologize for his life as a musician, and though he does apologize for the damage his drug use has caused, he cannot bring himself to swear that he will never use heroin again. The divisions of class between Sonny and his brother remain; by not apologizing for this difference, Sonny remains steadfast, but also gives his brother a chance to have an epiphany of his own. He gives his brother a chance to move towards him. This is the message of Sonny’s Blues, and it has a parallel in Toni Morrison’s Recitatif.
By embracing his own status as an outsider, Sonny manages to remain standing; but society cannot change until those of a higher social status are willing to change also. The story of Sonny’s Blues is largely the story of the narrator coming to grapple with this fact. In a similar way, Recitatif is just as much Roberta’s story as it is Twyla’s. It is Roberta who provokes the debate about the damage done to Maggie the kitchen-worker: was Maggie black, or was she white? Did she fall down on her own, or did the two girls attack her? At the end of Recitatif, Roberta makes a confession which clarifies matters. Maggie’s race remains uncertain, but it is revealed that the two little girls did not attack her. Roberta confesses as much to Twyla. “Listen to me,” she says to her …show more content…
friend: "Listen to me. I really did think [Maggie] was black. I didn't make that up. I really thought so. But now I can't be sure. I just remember her as old, so old. And because she couldn't talk – well, you know, I thought she was crazy. She'd been brought up in an institution like my mother was and like I thought I would be too. And you were right. We didn't kick her. Only [the older girls did]. But, well, I wanted to. I really wanted them to hurt her. I said we did it, too. You and me, but that's not true. And I don't want you to carry that around. It was just that I wanted to do it so bad that day – wanting to is doing it” (Wagner-Martin and Davidson 174-175). Roberta absolves her friend from blame, and in so doing, she manages to come to a deeper understanding of her friend. Throughout Recitatif, thanks to the class divide, Twyla and Roberta have had difficulty “seeing” one another: both remain hung up on superficial differences, such as their clothes, and their husband’s respective jobs. But now, by focusing on Maggie – a woman who, as a mute and a cripple, was even more of an outsider than they were – Roberta is able to see her friend clearly for the first time. She can now see that they were both were shaped by their mutual experience; that they were both once frightened little girls in an unfriendly world. Roberta begins to cry, and Twyla says to her: "We were kids, Roberta… Eight… And lonely.” Roberta adds these words: "Scared, too.” (Wagner-Martin and Davidson 175).
Then, in an exceptionally generous move, Morrison (and Twyla, narrator of the story), gives Roberta the final words of the story: “Roberta lifted her hands from the tabletop and covered her face with her palms. When she took them away she really was crying. ‘Oh shit, Twyla. Shit, shit, shit. What the hell happened to Maggie?’” (Wagner-Martin and Davidson 175).
This is generous, because in allowing Roberta the last line of the story, Twyla is in a sense giving Roberta an equal place in it: it is the story of the two of them; just as Sonny’s Blues is the story of Sonny and his brother. Roberta must have her epiphany, just as Sonny’s brother must have his vision in the nightclub. For once she is able to see Maggie as a person, not just a member of a lower social class, Roberta removes herself from the class divide; and then she is able to see Twyla as
well. Sonny’s Blues and Recitatif are stories about the difficulty of seeing: the two brothers and the two women both have difficulty seeing one another through artificial barriers. In both stories, the outsider figure (Sonny, Twyla), remains steadfast. Twyla may be embarrassed by her clothes and her lack of money, but she never ever apologizes for them, just as Sonny never apologies for his love of a disreputable brand of music. The two outsiders remain steadfast, and in remaining motionless yet defiant, they gave their peers a chance to discern them through the class barrier. But it is not enough just for one side to remain defiant. The message of Baldwin and of Morrison is this: true social change requires defiance from the outsider, and also empathy from the observer. Twyla and Sonny are the outsiders, but the ones who must change the most are the standard bearers of so-called “polite” society: Roberta and Sonny’s unnamed brother. In the end, strength meets eventual empathy, and thus, class barriers are surmounted, and society is gradually changed.
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.
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.
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).
First, the very sorrow that the characters in this story face is that of racial discrimination a form of darkness. It is noted in the very first paragraph “I stared at it in the swinging lights of the subway car, and in the faces and bodies of the people, and in my own face, trapped in the darkness that roared outside.”(58) The setting of this story takes place in Harlem, New York. The city of Harlem is notoriously known for its inner city, poverty stricken population and mostly as a location in which to find African Americans. “These boys now, were living as we’d been living then they were growing up with a rush and their heads bumped abruptly against the low ceiling of their actual possibilities.” (59). The story Sonny’s Blues was written in the 1950’s which clearly segregation was still indeed active and the African Americans were lynched by the darkness of their skin tone. In the 1950’s the chance of an African American becoming successful especially with coming from the ghetto was extremely low. In the time frame that presents itsel...
Conflict is opposition between two forces, and it may be external or internal,” (Barker). There are two styles of external conflict that can be examined within the plot of “Sonny’s Blues”. The first of these is character versus society. This is the outer layer of the external conflict observed between Sonny and the society, which his life is out casted from. The meat and potatoes of the external conflict however, is character versus character. Sonny lives a lifestyle that his brother seems to be incapable of understanding. The internal conflict lies within the narrator. It is his struggle to understand his brother that drives the plot. The climax occurs when Sonny and the narrator argue in the apartment. The argument stems from the narrators complete inability to understand Sonny’s drug usage and life as a musician, and Sonny’s feeling of abandonment and inability to make his brother understand him. This conflict appears to come to a resolve at the resolution as the narrator orders Sonny a drink following hearing Sonny perform for the first time. It appears as though this is the moment when the narrator begins to understand, perhaps for the first time, his brother the
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."
In conclusion, “Sonny’s Blues” is the story of Sonny told through his brother’s perspective. It is shown that the narrator tries to block out the past and lead a good “clean” life. However, this shortly changes when Sonny is arrested for the use and possession of heroin. When the narrator starts talking to his brother again, after years of no communication, he disapproves of his brother’s decisions. However, after the death of his daughter, he slowly starts to transform into a dynamic character. Through the narrator’s change from a static to a dynamic character, readers were able to experience a remarkable growth in the narrator.
At first glance, "Sonny's Blues" seems ambiguous about the relationship between music and drugs. After all, the worlds of jazz and drug addiction are historically intertwined; it could be possible that Sonny's passion for jazz is merely an excuse for his lifestyle and addiction, as the narrator believes for a time. Or perhaps the world that Sonny has entered by becoming involved in jazz is the danger- if he had not encountered jazz he wouldn't have encountered drugs either. But the clues given by the portrayals of music and what it does for other figures in the story demonstrate music's beneficial nature; music and drugs are not interdependent for Sonny. By studying the moments of music interwoven throughout the story, it can be determined that the author portrays music as a good thing, the preserver and sustainer of hope and life, and Sonny's only way out of the "deep and funky hole" of his life in Harlem, with its attendant peril of drugs (414).
Harlem is the setting of this story and has been a center for drugs and alcohol abuse. The initial event in this story shows that Sonny is still caught in this world. Sonny says that he is only selling drugs to make money and claims that he is no longer using. In the story the brother begins to see that Sonny has his own problems, but tries to help the people around him by using music to comfort
The themes in “Sonny’s Blues”, shows a constant struggle between brotherly love and the imagery of how the narrator shows the light and dark of their lives. The mother gives the narrator the obligation to look after his brother no matter what. The light and dark within the story elaborates with imagery and flash back events that gave light and darkness into their lives that were separate but both had problems.
Sonny’s brother and him finally decided to reconcile when Gracie, Sonny’s niece, passed away at a young age. The brothers wrote back and forth and one thing became clear to Sonny’s brother, music affected him. Sonny’s brother always saw the music/jazz scene as an unhealthy lifestyle full of drugs and scandal. The only thing Sonny would really reinforce was that it was not because of the music. Sonny came back to New York after rehab from heroin and came to see the old neighborhood in Harlem. The brothers see that they have so much to be thankful for and that they will always have each other.
In the story, “Recitatif,” Toni Morrison uses vague signs and traits to create Roberta and Twyla’s racial identity to show how the characters relationship is shaped by their racial difference. Morrison wants the reader’s to face their racial preconceptions and stereotypical assumptions. Racial identity in “Recitatif,” is most clear through the author’s use of traits that are linked to vague stereotypes, views on racial tension, intelligence, or ones physical appearance. Toni Morrison provides specific social and historical descriptions of the two girls to make readers question the way that stereotypes affect our understanding of a character. The uncertainties about racial identity of the characters causes the reader to become pre-occupied with assigning a race to a specific character based merely upon the associations and stereotypes that the reader creates based on the clues given by Morrison throughout the story. Morrison accomplishes this through the relationship between Twyla and Roberta, the role of Maggie, and questioning race and racial stereotypes of the characters. Throughout the story, Roberta and Twyla meet throughout five distinct moments that shapes their friendship by racial differences.
The light described in Sonny’s blues is used on interpreting on Sonny’s face when he was young and the warmth that came from sitting in a room full of adults after church. The light is also represented on all the positive and hopeful elements that are a part of his life. "When she was singing before," said Sonny, abruptly, "her voice reminded me for a minute of what heroin feels like sometimes-when it's in your veins. It makes you feel sort of warm and cool at the same time. And distant. And- and sure." (Baldwin 142). Susan Lee helped support all the elements of jazz that were shown in Sonny’s Blues But the story generally talks about the separation foundations of community and family through the eyes of an algebra aka the narrator and his brother Sonny who becomes a jazz musician. On the day of Sonny’s performance, he plays a flat statement. “Sonny went all the way back of the stage to get a piece of music. He really began with the spare, a flat statement of the opening phrase of the song" (Baldwin 205). During Sonny’s performance, both the narrator and Sonny find the salvation they’ve been seeking, even if only temporarily. This showing the bond that the narrator and Sonny have been through with some light-hearted times and the purpose jazz of
Society is made up of individuals – individuals with passions, dreams, fears, and regrets. The society where Sonny existed was hell to say the very least. They lived in the shadow of two wars: one where both brothers served for their country and the one that each man must fight from within. Both brothers survived the Second World War but no one knows the outcome of the wars that rage inside. The Second World War caused people grief and suffering but I think that both brothers experienced more pain with their internal conflicts. And they were mere reflections of what was happening at every urban black American house hold. Sonny summed up what was happening in his life and in their society when he partly agreed with his brother when he said;