Symbolism is such an interesting aspect of stories that when you take the time to sit back and analyze after initially reading it, things seem to pop out at you. Something so small could mean something so great to the story and it may not occur to the reader until they have read through a few times. In “Sonny’s Blues” by James Baldwin, symbolism was used quite a bit to represent different aspects of the story. One main use of symbolism was darkness, and it was used in many different scenes within the story. Light was also symbolized a bit within the story, specifically at the end.
I found the representation darkness within the story to be at times subtle, but it helps the reader to see the characters in a clearer way. At first, the narrator tells us of 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…” (36). This is where he first describes the darkness. Here darkness has a negative view from our narrator. He portrays the boy’s futures to be dark after telling the reader how they were being rushed to grow up and filled with rage. He uses the image of darkness of movies to represent their focuses now. Their focuses now of watching movies for example is keeping them from seeing what their future will be come.
Later on, he associates darkness again with Sonny’s friend who he meets. He described him as having “dark brown skin and it made his eyes look yellow” (37) and he continues to tell us about dirt that he can see and his kinked hair. The man sounds disgusting and we later find out that he may have unconsciously been one of the reasons why Sonny started using heroin. He talked of the positives of being high, but he f...
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...nderstood, at last, that he could help us to be free if we would listen, that he would never be free until we did” (58). Sonny and the other members could help spread this motivation and light, but they needed other people to listen for them to do that.
Darkness is really a struggle for both men in this story. The whole story seemed to have darkness lurking around somewhere. The light only really showed as a positive outlook at the end because of Sonny and his band. The whole time the narrator did not seem to have this positive look on freedom until he finally saw his brother played. Therefore, was the narrator really the “light” or was Sonny who showed a taste of freedom?
Works Cited
Baldwin, James. "Sonny’s Blues." The Story and its Writer: An Introduction to Shorty Fiction. Ed. Ann Charters. 8th ed. Bedord / St. Martin's, 2011. 835--839. Print.
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 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."
Murray, Donald C. James Baldwin's 'Sonny's Blues': Complicated and Simple. N.p.: Newberry College, n.d. Literary Reference Database. Web. 23 Mar. 2014.
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.
Another theme may be racism because the mother tells the story of her husband’s brother getting killed by a bunch of white men that were drunk and just wanted to have some fun. The fun ultimately led to the death of a human. The significance of suffering and racism in this story is that throughout Sonny’s life, their family has had struggles which caused Sonny to choose wrong paths in life. Baldwin executed a well written short story by bringing the point of view through the eyes of Sonny’s brother. The setting made the story realistic, and the themes were powerful and influential.
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.
...open, Creole wishes him Godspeed and allows Sonny to musically weave the tale of his past: "Sonny's fingers filled the air with life, his life" (94). This high plateau of expression is the untainted counterpart to the effects of heroin. This is the major turning point in the story: the point at which Sonny triumphs over the dark side and finally finds a firm grip among the freedom-fighting soldiers of Harlem.
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...
Baldwin, James. "Sonny's Blues." The Oxford Book of American Short Stories 1992: 409 - 439.
After reading the short story "Sonny's Blues" by James Baldwin, I find there are two major themes that Baldwin is trying to convey, suffering and irony. The first theme that he brings out and tries to get the reader to understand is the theme of suffering. The second theme that the author illustrates is the theme of irony.
The narrator allows Sonny to move into his apartment. By allowing Sonny to live with him he has allowed to trust him again. For example, the narrator explains, “The idea of searching Sonny’s room made me still. I scarcely dared to admit to myself what I’d be searching for. I didn’t know what I’d do if I found it. Or if I didn’t” (pg. 91). This shows how the narrator had the opportunity to search his brother’s room, but had the ability not to. Tension grew among brothers while living under one roof. This starts the climax of both arguing in the apartment. The narrator doesn’t understand why his brother wants to be a musician. This argument was built of emotion both had and not yet discussed among each other. Such as the narrator expressing his anger towards his brother’s drug use and Sonny’s frustration towards the narrator not understanding his plan to become a jazz musician. For example, the narrator states, “I realized, with this mocking look, that there stood between us, forever, beyond the power of time or forgiveness, the fact that I had held silence – so long! – when he had needed human speech to help him” (pg.94). The argument with his brother made him realize that he abandon his younger brother when he needed him the most. He realized that if he would have spoken out and talk about his drug use that he wouldn’t have to go
“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 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.