Short Story Characteristics
The short story is a concise form of narrative prose that is usually simpler and more direct compared to longer works of fiction such as novels. Therefore, because of their short length, short stories rely on many forms of literary devices to convey the idea of a uniform theme seen throughout the script. This theme is illustrated by using characteristics that are developed throughout the story such as, plot, setting and characters. The three main components are developed throughout the story in order to guide the reader to the underlying theme, which is necessary as a short story lacking a theme also lacks meaning or purpose.
The short story “Sonny’s Blues” by James Baldwin uses characterization to identify the realization that tragedy and suffering can be transformed by a communal art, in this case, jazz music. The narrator in this story is Sonny’s brother, an unnamed high school algebra teacher that has worked hard to attain the trappings of middle class success. Through the eyes of this down to earth, caring husband and father the reader witnesses the life of Sonny. In his youth Sonny was his father’s son however, he strayed from his family into a stereotypical, perverse heroin addiction. Sonny’s lifestyle change causes conflict between the two brothers, which is not resolved until Sonny is released from prison for pushing heroin. Through the expression of musical talent, the narrator and his brother become closer in their relationship an...
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.
Everyone has good days and bad days, good months and bad months, but what people need when they are down is someone to talk to. In the short story, “Sonny’s Blues,” by James Baldwin, Sonny is in a rough patch in life, and he has no one to share his feelings with. Sonny turns to music to let out his emotions, but like many artists, he struggles to do so. He turns to drugs to make his troubles go away, but this leads to even more problems. Sonny has troubles in his life, but music keeps him sane as he tries to communicate his troubles through the piano, and his art invokes emotion to those who hear it.
James Baldwin’s Sonny’s Blues tells the story of the narrator and his brother and the hardships that they must endure. As Kahlil Gibran States “Out of suffering have emerged the strangest souls, the most massive characters are seared with scars.” (Gibran). In that very quote the real light is shown as it informs the reader that with suffering comes growth and once the person whomever it may be emerges out of the darkness they may have scars but it has made them stronger. The theme of light and darkness as well as suffering play a vital part in this story. For both men there are times in which they have the blues and suffer in the darkness of their lives but music takes the suffering from them.
“Sonny’s Blues” is a short story in which James Baldwin, the author, presents an existential world where suffering characterizes a man’s basic state. The theme of tragedy and suffering can be transformed into a communal art form, such as blues music. Blues music serves as a catalyst for change because the narrator starts to understand not only the music but also himself and his relationship with Sonny. The narrator’s view of his brother begins to change; he understands that Sonny uses music as an outlet for his suffering and pain. This story illustrates a wide critical examination.
In “Sonny’s Blues,” Baldwin’s metaphors relate the emotions of his characters. His writing makes the experience of living in Harlem as a black person in the 1950s real for the reader. Moreover, “Sonny’s Blues” is a story that is universally relatable on human level, as the emotions and relationships Baldwin reveals are not unique to the story’s
“Sonny’s Blues” by James Baldwin relies on music to convey the theme of hardships for both Sonny and his older brother. The relationship between the two siblings is rocky. “I didn't write Sonny or send him anything for a long time.” said the older brother. Jazz is able to bring both of them closer together and have a better understanding of one another. With the older brother appreciating Sonny’s love for jazz it also allows him to the troubles in both their lives. Through Sonny’s music he was able to help his brother’s pain and in return his brother was able to help him. At first the older brother said, “I simply couldn't see why on earth he'd want to spend his time hanging around nightclubs, clowning around on bandstands," but towards the end of his brothers performance his views changed. He sends Sonny a drink after his performance and Sonny nods back to him. This represents the acknowledgment that Sonny now has his older brother’s approval. Even though Sonny and his brother still have different views and understandings of music it is still their own opinion. Their relationship and bond strengthen with the help of music.
Historically, strong family relationships have been emphasized by American society. Strong family ties have been significant to maintaining healthy lifestyles and relationships across many cultures, including African American culture. Sonny, the younger brother in James Baldwin’s “Sonny’s Blues”, has suffered from a heroin addiction which caused him to separate from both his parents and his older brother. The essay portrays two brothers who struggle with their difficult Harlem environment, cultural issues, and their emotional detachment from one another. As the brothers struggle with their inner conflicts and outward environmental struggles, they are reunited through a common theme in the essay: music. Baldwin empowers Sonny with a gift of extraordinary musicianship, and uses this gift to enlighten and empower the narrator. Baldwin’s essay narrates the trials of the narrator on his journey to self- discovery and the brothers trial of rebuilding their brotherly bond with music as their guide. The essay uses music as a form of communication between the brothers and symbolizes it as a powerful force in their relationship. In Baldwin’s essay, “Sonny’s Blues”, the narrator and Sonny are empowered through music, and through this empowerment, the music is able to rekindle and rebuild the brothers relationship.
When first reading “Sonny’s Blues” by James Baldwin, it may initially seem that the relationship between musicians and drugs is synonymous. Public opinion suggests that musicians and drugs go hand and hand. The possibility lies that Sonny’s passion for jazz music is the underlying reason for his drug use, or even the world of jazz music itself brought drugs into Sonny’s life. The last statement is what the narrator believes to be true. However, by delving deeper and examining the theme of music in the story, it is nothing but beneficial for Sonny and the other figures involved. Sonny’s drug use and his music are completely free of one another. Sonny views his jazz playing as a ray of light to lead him away from the dim and dismal future that Harlem has to offer.
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.
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."
"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.
James Baldwin is a writer from the twentieth century. He wrote “Sonny’s Blues,” a short story with the image in Harlem, as many of his stories were, was published in 1957. “Sonny’s Blues” is about the narrator, who remained nameless, and how his life changed after he discovers his brother’s drug addiction. “Sonny’s Blues” highlights the theme of light and darkness throughout the story’s good and bad event, the struggles of brotherly love, and the dilemmas that the narrator and Sonny face as siblings by being raised the same but taking totally different routes in their lives.
“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...
Sonny’s Blues is a short story written by James Baldwin. The story is written in the first person singular narrative style and it begins with the narrator who reads in the newspaper on his way to work about his younger brother Sonny, who has been caught in a heroine bust and jailed. The narrator becomes very disappointed in his brother that he does not write to him for a while but after his daughter Gracie, succumbs to polio, that is when he remembers his brother and writes a letter to him. The two brothers maintain contact through the letters till Sonny is released from jail. After his release, Sonny moves in with his brother and his family. During a family dinner, they flash back about their parents. The narrator describes their father as a drunk who died when sonny was fifteen. He liked his privacy just like sonny but they never used to get along. Sonny was a withdrawn and a quiet type while their father feigned to be big, loud-talking and tough. The narrator recalls the last time he saw their mother alive was before he left for war. He remembered his mother telling him to take care of his brother. The story talks of Sonny’s life in Harlem and how he tried to escape the stereotype of the community’s traditional social view. He tries to venture into jazz music which the narrator does not find suitable for him. Sonny gets lured into drugs in the attempt of escaping the darkness in his life and finds himself in jail. The narrator tries to help and understand his brother. When Sonny invites the narrator to Greenwich Village to watch him perform, the narrator is uncertain but accepts the invitation. As Sonny plays the piano, the narrator feels the magic in the music and can see how his brother’s emotions come alive and he is able to...