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Sonny's blues james baldwin story
Character analysis baldwin sonny's blues
Sonny's blues james baldwin story
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While not true for everyone, people are a product of their environment. The surroundings that a person is exposed to, may have a direct influence on the decisions they make in life. Even if someone is smart and has great aspirations, the environment they are brought up in may be holding them back. People who make terrible choices and then are shocked by the consequences are simply coming from a context in which those weren't as bad a choices as they turned out to be. This is the case for Sonny of James Baldwin’s “Sonny’s Blues.” Although Sonny was an aspiring musician, the surroundings of Harlem would provide opportunities to make poor decisions that may not have been presented to him had he been in a different environment. For this reason,
Buddha has famously been attributed saying that “No one saves us but ourselves. No one can and no one may. We ourselves must walk the path.” In life others pave pathways that we must take that may seem suitable, and if we diverge we are seen as rebellious. The short story Sonny’s Blues by James Baldwin, is narrated by Sonny’s older brother who shares from his perspective the struggles in life he and his brother go through growing up in the projects of Harlem, New York. Using imagery that makes readers feel as though they are experiencing it as well, the author vividly portrays the difficulties of finding a path in life through the various factors that inhibit one such as family, friends, and the cultural standard ascribed to one. In the story,
We are all part of a society where justice and respect must be followed if we want to have a nice image of ourselves and be accepted by others. In the short story, Sonny’s Blues by James Baldwin, two brothers are struggling to accept each other. Until the brother listened to Sonny and accepted what he wanted to do in life and who he was as an individual, the brother was in the darkness with his brother and himself. Through flashbacks and the characters, we were able to see how their life was before their mother and father died and what actually forced Sonny to take drugs. This story showed that without acceptance, people have difficulties to continue their life in happiness, so they stay in the darkness until they accept themselves and the people surrounding them.
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).
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 “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.
“The Country Husband” by John Cheever and “Sonny’s Blues” by James Baldwin include many aspects of being misunderstood. When comparing these two stories, both have conflicts for the characters to overcome and include a creative output to help them cope with those struggles. In addition, both stories include contradicting settings that represent a similar mood.
“The world ain’t changed”, the end of a sentence muttered by the narrator’s mother in “Sonny’s Blues” is something very vague but very important to an underlying theme of the story that some people may not have caught on to while reading it the first time. The hidden theme, so to speak, is racism. While it is not there in your face, if you read between the lines, there are plenty of examples in the story that point to how racism was still very rampant during the time in which the story takes place (which we assume to be around 1960-1970).
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."
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
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 "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.
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).
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 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.