Authors Denis Johnson in “Car Crash While Hitchhiking” and James Baldwin’s “Sonny’s Blues” used the narrative writing style for their stories. Yet Johnson’s writing leaves a lot of room for readers to fill in the blank on characterization in order to “experience” the story fully. While Baldwin’s story provided readers distinctive features of the characters. However, both stories have a common theme, main characters suffering and their experience with drugs abuse and addiction. Johnson used certain structure elements to tell his story while Baldwin used all of the structure elements, theme, character, plot, setting, and conflict, to depict substance abuse in his story. Both authors described vividly how their characters feel and act while …show more content…
It’s about human suffering that led to drugs addiction as a coping mechanism. In this story, the narrator is not the main character, rather the story focuses on his brother, Sonny. Readers were giving more structure details about the story. It is about two African-American brothers growing up poor in Harlem, they have nothing in common except their background. They are as different as day and night. Hence, they were disconnected in their thoughts and feeling. Sonny has always felt his older brother had never listen to what he really want out of life. Sonny was depict as “darkness” since he was the one using drugs, got into troubles, and was sent to prison. The author used symbolism such as “trapped in the darkness which roared outside” and “great block of ice got settled in my belly and kept melting there slowly all day long” to describe sadness and suffering. Sonny wanted to escape Harlem, he feel trapped there by the destructive pressures of poverty and racism all around him. He turned to drugs and music to escape his reality. All through Sonny’s young trouble life, his brother did not seem to suffer the same fate. He joined the Army, got married, came back to live in the same community and works as a school teacher. Even though he sees the same or similar behaviors from his students that Sonny had displayed years ago; he describes his students as “all they really knew were two darknesses, the darkness of their lives, which was now closing in on them, and the darkness of the movies, which had blinded them to that other darkness”. Again, Baldwin used “darkness” to imply these boys only know bad and they will get worst. It characterizes a limited option, the hopelessness that African-American people endure in their daily life. The narrator describes one of Sonny’s old friends, now a grown man, as “partly like a dog, partly like a cunning child”, implying that he is
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.
In James Baldwin's "Sonny's Blues" the symbolic motif of light and darkness illustrates the painful nature of reality the two characters face as well as the power gained through it. The darkness represents the actuality of life on the streets of the community of Harlem, where there is little escape from the reality of drugs and crime. The persistent nature of the streets lures adolescents to use drugs as a means of escaping the darkness of their lives. The main character, Sonny, a struggling jazz musician, finds himself addicted to heroin as a way of unleashing the creativity and artistic ability that lies within him. While using music as a way of creating a sort of structure in his life, Sonny attempts to step into the light, a life without drugs. The contrasting images of light and darkness, which serve as truth and reality, are used to depict the struggle between Sonny and the narrator in James Baldwin's "Sonny's Blues."
...his father had acted the way he did, which caused him to be committed. He was facing the same experiences and the same side-effects his father once felt. However, faced with this dilemma between acceptance and equal power, Baldwin looks to the only man he can trust to help him, his father. He trusts his father because he knows that his father went through the same dilemma he is going through, he has seen the same affects in his father’s rage and hate. However, his father already passed away, and what help that could have been gathered from his father is gone; Baldwin can only piece together his memories of his father’s character and life and compare it to his own to see how the two are really alike.
Baldwin's mind seems to be saturated with anger towards his father; there is a cluster of gloomy and heartbreaking memories of his father in his mind. Baldwin confesses that "I could see him, sitting at the window, locked up in his terrors; hating and fearing every living soul including his children who had betrayed him" (223). Baldwin's father felt let down by his children, who wanted to be a part of that white world, which had once rejected him. Baldwin had no hope in his relationship with his father. He barely recalls the pleasurable time he spent with his father and points out, "I had forgotten, in the rage of my growing up, how proud my father had been of me when I was little" (234). The cloud of anger in Baldwin's mind scarcely lets him accept the fact that his father was not always the cold and distant person that he perceived him to be. It is as if Baldwin has for...
As life has many ways to live it, not everybody gets to live a good life whether it’s a happy life or a miserable life. We sometimes have to struggle and accomplish things in order to live a better life. Because life it’s not easy, good things come to the ones that try to succeed in life. A victim by the name of Sonny did not have an easy life he had to go through life threating struggles, in order to succeed in life. From seeing your own mother die to stop talking to your family and just going on your own with no support from your parents, because you don’t have any his one and only was his big brother who tried helping him out.
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."
The main ways free will is limited in these stories are immediate surroundings, one’s emotions, and authority by either a government or even something divine. The main proponents of free will not existing also tie into their stories irrationality and the inclination to follow emotion. Free will can be limited in many ways. Natural human inclinations can lead on to actions not streamlined with logical thinking. One’s place of birth largely define the life on will lead. Those who support free will, however, only give their characters the option of struggling against these outside forces. Sonny’s Blues, for example, has Sonny try to overcome his surroundings and the natural tendency to try that which is forbidden (drugs) with his passions towards
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.
James Baldwin writes about two African-American brothers growing up in Harlem, a black ghetto in New York, during the 1950's. During this time black people were forced to live in a world of prejudice, discrimination, poverty and suppression. The life of a black person was very difficult; many opportunities afforded to whites were not afforded to blacks. Sonny and his brother lived in the projects and had many obstacles to overcome that white people didn't have to. Sonny chose music to outwardly express his suffering, his brother chose to bottle it up and keep it inside, but this is the common thread they both shared. Suffering is also shown in the story when Baldwin says "it came to me that what we both were seeking through our separate cab windows was that part of ourselves which had been left behind" (P 47). I think this quote means that both Sonny and his older brother want to retrieve some of their past so that it can help them cope with what has happened in their lives. If Sonny and his brother can both cope with what has happened in their lives and get over it, I think t they both can start moving forward and putting this behind them.
“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...
One of the many ideas presented in both was. The idea that far too many African Americans are setup to fail right from the beginning of their lives. What Pitts and Baldwin mean by this is, that African Americans are put in areas with high amounts of crime, poor school districts and very few opportunities to succeed. In the book Baldwin talks about similar disadvantages he faced growing up. The kids at his school were drinking in the hallways and accepting that they could never make it out of the ghetto. Baldwin’s own parents constantly tried to convince him to quit school and go to work, because they too believed he would never be able to succeed. Baldwin also talks about how all of the disadvantages drove the kids in his area to the Avenue. The Avenue was where the pimps, whores and presumably drug dealers were. Thus, ensuring that once one the kids from Baldwin’s are ended up on the Avenue, they had no future after that. Additionally, Pitts stated that this very same issue is still relevant
Baldwin consistently uses images of shadows to show the despair the narrator is in over Sonny's ruin. The narrator "[does not] want to believe that [he would] ever see [Sonny] going down, coming to nothing, all that light in his face [going] out, in the condition [he has] already see so many others" (Baldwin 42). It is hard for him to see his brother, someone who he had played with as a child, succumb to the hard, dark life of drugs and jazz. The narrator relates to the young boys he sees on the streets of Harlem, remembering his childhood. He describes these boys as "filled with rage" as they recognize "the two darknesses, the darkness of their lives . . . and the darkness of the movies, which blind[s] them to the other darkness . . ." (42). In these children, the narrator sees his broken brother. As he is leaving the school where he teaches, he sees "another boy, standing in the shadow of a doorway, looking just like Sonny . . . [not] Sonny, but somebody [he] used to know . . . Sonny's friend . . . always high and raggy . . ." (42-43). Even though this boy is obviously not Sonny, the narrator cannot help but take another look at him. He wants to remember Sonny as his fun-loving, innocent little brother, but he knows that in reality, Sonny has become a drug addict, living a hard, decrepit life.
This is my first time to read “Sonny’s Blues”. I think the reason for this short fiction wrote successful is great in portray the character and story details. The author James Baldwin use great literary elements to depict the story’s develop. I want to analysis the title, plot and flashback use in this short fiction.
This darkness begins when the narrator reads the article about his brother Sonny. The narrator starts to have much darkness imagery. On the subway the narrator feels “Trapped in darkness which roared outside” Page93 (Norton Introduction to Literature, Sonny’s Blues). The narrator disbelieves that this is actually happening to his brother. His trapped in negative thoughts on Sonny’s drug abuse that he starts to feel scared for sonny. The narrator feels that he has failed at taking care of his brother. The narrator compares Sonny’s darkness with his student’s darkness. Stated in the following quote “ These boys, now, were living as we’d been living then, they were growing up with a rush and their heads bumped abruptly against
In Baldwin, James’ narrative titled Sonny’s Blues the theme of hopelessness is found throughout the text, and is developed just at the start of the chapter as the teacher leaves the train station, deep in thought. The teacher was shocked with what he had read in the papers about his brother who had been arrested for drug peddling. His heart is heavy because he is not sure if he will see his brother again and deep down he feels that he has let his mother down in looking after his brother Sonny. The trend comes as a sign of hopelessness and despair because people who are from higher social classes could only be worried about which prominent lawyer to hire to take on the case or what private schools to send their children to. Hopelessness is further displayed as the teacher ponders that his brother, Sonny, had started using drugs when at the same age