In the short story, Sonny’s Blues by James Baldwin takes place in Harlem during the early 1950’s. The protagonist of the passage is Sonny, and the narrator (whom we don’t find out his name) is his brother.
The main conflict in the story is the narrator’s relationship with his brother, Sonny. The first few pages, the narrator gives suspense to the reader as you’re trying to figure out who Sonny is and what he did as he says, “I was scared. Scared for Sonny. He became real to me again.” “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, and great gentleness and privacy. I wondered what he looked like now.” This lets the reader
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know the relationship he has with Sonny is they were once close, but lost contact since he does not know what he looks like now.” The narrator’s attitude in the beginning of the novel was very unsympathetic as he think Sonny cant change his ways of drug abuse. For example with a convo he was having with a homeless person in a courtyard he says, “You mean – they’ll let him out. And then he’ll just start working his way back in again. You mean he’ll never kick the habit. Is that what you mean?” “That’s right, he said, cheerfully.” This lets the reader know Sonny’s brother is confident Sonny cant change his way of being a drug addict and will end up back in jail. With the brother’s relationship being disconnected for so long, the narrator doesn’t understand why Sonny even became a drug addict. He questions Sonny saying, “He must want to die, he’s killing himself, why does he want to die?” Sonny’s brother does not yet understand the purpose of why he uses drugs. However, Sonny has a caring, sympathetic attitude towards his brother trying to prove he’s working on being a better person and he loves his brother. To prove this, Sonny wrote a letter stating, “Dear Brother, you don’t know how much I needed to hear from you. I wanted to write you many a time but I dug how much I must have hurt you and so I didn’t write. But now I feel like a man who’s been trying to climb up out of some deep, real deep and funky hole and just saw the sun up there, outside. I got to get outside.” Sonny wants to have a connection with his brother as he said, “If I’d known what I was doing I would never have hurt you so, you and a lot of other fine people who were nice to me and believed in me.” Realizing he let his brother and others down. One of the differences between the brothers is the difference in age, which the narrator says the “seven year difference in our ages lay between us like a chasmal I wondered if these years would ever operate between us as a bridge.” The age gap was another reason why the brother’s relationship was dysfunctional. While the narrator lives a mainstream life with his wife and kids working as a math teacher, he can’t fathom Sonny’s passion for music. The narrator asked Sonny, “You mean, you want to be a drummer?” I somehow had the feeling that being a drummer might be all right for other people but not for my brother Sonny.” He also says wondering, “I simply couldn’t see why on earth he’d want to spend his time hanging around nightclubs, clowning around on bandstands, while people pushed each other around a dance floor!” He thinks Sonny needs to grow up and mature as he tells him “its time you started thinking about your future.” When Sonny and his brother do meet for the first time in years, his brother has no faith in Sonny, and thought he is bringing him back to a troubled life as he said, “the moment Sonny and I started into the house I had the feeling that I was simply bringing him back into the danger he had almost died trying to escape.” Also, when they reconnected “everything I did seemed awkward to me, and everything I said sound freighted with hidden meaning” meaning, the narrator was nervous to talk to his brother. As kids there relationship wasn’t good too because Sonny was favored by his father, “He and Sonny hadn’t ever got on too well. And this was partly because Sonny was the apple of his father’s eye.” The narrator also feels weird around Sonny because the promise he kept with his mother. He promised to protect and look after Sonny, which he failed to do. He promised his mother he “…won’t let nothing happen to Sonny.” Later in the novel, the narrator does show his feelings towards Sonny wanting the best for him as he “grabbed him by the shoulders…” telling him “…I’ll help you do whatever you want to do.” As he convinces Sonny to stay in school, however Sonny has different aspirations.
His goal was “…join the army. Or the navy…” The turning point in their relationship is when Sonny admits to his brother “you never hear anything I say” After attending a nightclub together seeing a lady perform, Sonny’s brother has epiphany stating “It struck me all of a sudden how much suffering she must have had to go through – to sing like that.” There relationship grows as Sonny explains why he takes drugs and how heroin effects his music and what the blues means to him. As Sonny opens up, his brother then becomes curious of his pain asking, “Why do people suffer?” Sonny lets his brother know he “needed to clear a space to listen –and I couldn’t find it, and I went crazy, I did terrible things to me, I was terrible for me.” Sonny wanted to change and in order to do so he wanted to leave Harlem. Harlem symbolized drugs for Sonny, he said “The reason I wanted to leave Harlem so bad was to get away from drugs. And then, when I ran away, that’s what I was running from – really. When I came back, nothing had changed, I hadn’t changed, I was jus – older.” Sonnys brothers attitude changes as he finally understands his brother and his suffering and pain. When they went to a show his brother realized “Here, I was in Sonny’s world. Or rather: his kingdom. Here it was not even a question that his veins bore royal
blood.” The narrator not only understood him, yet became considerate and sympathetic towards his little brother and his lifestyle. Not only did the narrator change, but the conflict was resolved with the relationship of the two brothers connecting and finally seeing eye to eye with each other.
According to Liukkonen, James Baldwin is well known for his "novels on sexual and personal identity, and sharp essays on civil-rights struggle in the United States." "Sonny's Blues" is no exception to this. The story takes place in Harlem, New York in the 1950's and tells of the relationship between two brothers. The older brother, who is the narrator and a participant in the novel, remains unnamed throughout the story. The novel is about the struggles, failures and successes of these two African American brothers growing up in the intercity as a minority. The encounters that the narrator and his brother, Sonny, have throughout the story exemplify Baldwin's theme of personal accountability and ethical criticism.
The transition of being a black man in a time just after slavery was a hard one. A black man had to prove himself at the same time had to come to terms with the fact that he would never amount to much in a white dominated country. Some young black men did actually make it but it was a long and bitter road. Most young men fell into the same trappings as the narrator’s brother. Times were hard and most young boys growing up in Harlem were swept off their feet by the onslaught of change. For American blacks in the middle of the twentieth century, racism is another of the dark forces of destruction and meaninglessness which must be endured. Beauty, joy, triumph, security, suffering, and sorrow are all creations of community, especially of family and family-like groups. They are temporary havens from the world''s trouble, and they are also the meanings of human life.
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. Sonny has had to deal with many troubles in life, and he turns to drugs for release, but this is just another one of his problems. Sonny is not very old when his
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.
Baldwin, James. "Sonny's Blues." The Oxford Book of American Short Stories 1992: 409 - 439.
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
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."
The story begins with the narrator’s brother, Sonny, being arrested for using heroin. When the narrator discovers what has happened to his brother, he slowly starts to relive his past. Up to this point, the narrator had completely cut his brother and his childhood from his life. He disapproves of the past and does everything in his power to get rid of it. The narrator had become an algebra teacher and had a family who he moved to get away from the bad influences on the street. As a result, it is shown in the story that he has worked hard to maintain a good “clean” life for his family and himself. Readers can see that he has lived a good life, but at the toll of denying where he came from and even his own brother. For years, his constant aim for success had been successful. However, as the story progressed everything he knew started to fall apart.
Baldwin, James. "Sonny's Blues." The Oxford Book of American Short Stories 1992: 409 - 439.
In conclusion, the short story "Sonny's Blues" by James Baldwin brings out two main themes: irony and suffering. You can actually feel the pain that Baldwin's characters experience; and distinguish the two different lifestyles of siblings brought up in the same environment. The older brother remaining nameless is a fabulous touch that really made me want to read on. This really piqued my interest and I feel it can lead to many discussions on why this technique was used. I really enjoyed this story; it was a fast and enjoyable reading. Baldwin keeps his readers thinking and talking long after they have finished reading his stories. His writing technique is an art, which very few, if any, can duplicate.
James Baldwin's short story "Sonny's Blues" highlights the struggle because community involvement and individual identity. Baldwin's "leading theme - the discovery of identity - is nowhere presented more successfully than in the short story 'Sonny's Blues" (Reilly 56). Individuals breeds isolation and even persecution by the collective, dominant community. This conflict is illustrated in three ways. First, the story presents the alienation of Sonny from his brother, the unnamed narrator. Second, Sonny's legal problems suggest that independence can cause the individual to break society's legal conventions. Finally, the text draws heavily from biblical influences. Sonny returns to his family just like the prodigal son, after facing substantial trials and being humiliated. The story's allusion to the parable of the prodigal son reflects Baldwin's profound personal interest in Christianity and the bible.
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...
James Baldwin was born in 1924 in Harlem, New York to an unwed mother. His mother married David Baldwin, a strict preacher who never accepted James. The oldest of nine children, Baldwin grew up in extreme poverty. Baldwin lived in Harlem until he moved to Paris due to the racial injustices. He returned to the United States in 1957 and became a major part of the civil rights movement. As one of the most popular authors of his time, Baldwin wrote about different problems such as sexual identity, family, church and life as an African American. (Rampersad) In “Sonny’s Blues,” he shows how a brother uses music to ease his suffering. James Baldwin was able to relate to the pain and suffering that jazz represents.