The Struggle In Sonny's Blues By James Baldwin

Overcoming life's struggles

Most good stories start with a fundamental list of ingredients: the initial situation, conflict, complication, climax, suspense, denouement, and conclusion; but every great writer sometimes shake up the recipe and add some spice, as in "Sonny's Blues" by James Baldwin. The author Baldwin tells the story in the first person from the point of view of an unnamed narrator, who, we find out, is Sonny's brother. The narrator in this story is an interesting figure, whom, he's mostly telling us Sonny's story, and himself."Sonny's Blues" is not just about Sonny's struggles and how they affect Sonny’s brother. Indeed, this story is as much about Sonny's drug use, Sonny's suffering, and family relationships.

When first reading “Sonny’s Blues” by James Baldwin, it may initially seem that the relationship between musicians and drugs are synonymous. In other words, musicians and drugs go hand and hand. But 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 (Baldwin,).

However, Sonny's brother does not agree with Sonny’s dream of being a musician by simply associating Jazz with drugs. He lumps jazz together with drugs and Sonny's addiction, blaming the jazz lifestyle for turning Sonny into a heroin addict because he knows that some musicians have to get high in order to play.
However, the use of Heroin was one of Sonny’s fastest ways to escape from suffering in order to perform music.

Suffering was a repeatable presence in "Sonny's Blues". From the death of Sonny's brother daughter to Sonny's drug addiction to the cold-blooded murder of Sonny's brother uncle, suffering dominates the community. Suffering was, as Sonny passionately argues, inescapable. Sonny explains that his heroin usage was an attempt to cope with suffering that would otherwise paralyze him, but he just agreed that there was no way not to suffer (Baldwin). In some ways, Sonny may agree with his brother that there is no way around suffering. But he doesn't just passively accept this. He'll keep doing whatever he can to stave it off, even if he knows deep down that this might be futile because yet suffering, for all the pain it causes, was essential for creating

music.
The Family operates on another level as well in “Sonny’s Blues” with the sense of some characters who create their own family separate from the one they're born into. Sonny's brother creates a family with his wife and children (this is the more traditional family), and in some ways Sonny creates an alternate family for himself, made up of people who understand his music and his way of life. As Sonny’s brother has stated “… he treated these other people as though they were his family and I weren't. So I got mad and then he got mad, and then I told him that he might just as well be dead as live the way he was living” (Baldwin, 174). While this might be good for Sonny, it devastates his brother. Because these same people, this same family, are also a negative influence, since some of them fuel Sonny's drug problem.