The Theme Of Suffering In James Baldwin's Sonny

Numerous instances of disconnect within the story can be clearly be identified. Sonny’s family is portrayed to be bitterly haunted by the fact that they hails from a black, poor, and still trapped within the precincts of the community. For Sonny being a young African American born in Harlem, he is aware of the limits and obstacles surrounding him. He struggles to defy the stereotypes by running away from Harlem and establishing a career in music. Unlike his brother, Sonny desire is to free from the traditional social order in Harlem. Instead of being free from the challenges of the society, Sonny winds up being confined in prison, he ends up being literally captive. Long after Sonny is released from prison, he is still described as a caged

animal that is trying to break free from the effects that prison has had on him and from the drug addiction that led to his incarceration.
Suffering assumes the center stage in the story right from one end the death of the narrator's uncle, parents and eventually the death of the daughter and on the other Sonny's drug addiction and family relations.

Sonny’s suffering complements the expression of real suffering and a protest against it passionately and inescapable. Suffering is symbolized throughout the story by use of darkness. Darkness is believed to have encroached lives of the narrator's family and the entire Harlem community. Members have accepted to live by it as something to be borne and endured. Although Sonny is an addict, he defends his state as an attempt to cope up with the suffering that would otherwise have paralyzed him. Suffering has caused the narrators family a lot of pain and is therefore, essential to engage art and redemption measures. However, Sonny explains the much suffering revival musicians must have had to go through in order to sing a nice song so well. One has to out darkness to sing good songs like Sonny does. Suffering which is symbolically presented as darkness, if applied creatively, can yield great achievements. It also helps individuals to understand and have compassion for each other, the two essential attributes of redemption. It is indeed the death of the narrator’s daughter that dramatically changes the narrators view to revert to a path that leads to his

salvation.
Racism being a great social problem is the dark undercurrent that flows throughout the story. Although it is imperfectly referenced, directly it is a major challenge facing the African American people. Imagery decrepit of housing projects that rise out of Harlem like “rocks in the middle of the boiling sea” are perfect result of local and federal segregationist housing policies, the projects represent the impact of racism on a down-trodden community that the social rights people put up with every single day. Many young people and students have expressed great anxiety to counter racism challenge just like Sonny who are living in a system that ruthless and endlessly discriminates against its people by the skin color. Much of the darkness and suffering presented in the story can be attributed to the effects of racism. Suffering is also viewed as a inheritable problem passed from one generation to the next to the American black community. The racial staging is clearly presented the by the narrator's mother when she gives an account of how drunken white men ran over her brother-in-law. She warns her son that a similar fate could befall his brother Sonny in the occasion he did not take decisive concerns about him. She demonstrates her worries that racism is still rife and a great threat to them.
The community in Harlem is packed up with burning anger and range is within them forcing them to live cruel and painful lives. However, the narrator portrays the entire neighborhood as a “boiling sea” (Baldwin 1957) where all sort of vices are practiced and equally regret for his class as a range filled generation (Baldwin 1957). He warns of a hidden menace that permeates at the Lenox Avenue. This has happened to many dwellers of Harlem, but more precisely has affected the narrator's family directly just as the narrator's mother describes the murder of the her brother-in-law as reason that harbor a smoldering rage against the racist white men. Although the anger and resentment by the community has piled up to dangerous levels, Sonny senses the volatility of Harlem as he peeps down from the window, he wonders aloud how the anger and range “don't blow the avenue apart”. Through entire story, the author attempts to demonstrate how the Harlem community is trying to owning an identity by fighting with their belief that anger and is not consuming them up while a majority of young generation is seeking to flee from the community captivity.
Imprisonment is a frequent and persistent theme in the story. The first impression of imprisonment occurs in the story when the narrator and the entire young generation express their desire to free from the customs and the village mentality and instead seek to find freedom in the city. However, in search for freedom, Sonny is physically imprisoned when he is jailed for peddling and using heroin. The prison provided him with is a devastating experience about life. Although imprisonment has minimal occurrence in the story much of it in the story is conceptual. For instance, the narrator in a number of occasions several referred Harlem as trapped therefore, folks must struggle to free. The narrator asserts that successful persons who manage to free the neighborhood “always left something of themselves behind, as some animals amputate a leg and leave it in the trap” (Baldwin 1957). Harlem appears to be a pool of poverty, crime, despair, and anger that traps its residents. There is a tug between the two brothers as Sonny pleads the narrator on the desire leave Harlem for the military. The narrator terms him as “trapped, and in anguish” and therefore, even when Sonny's is set free from prison the same feeling of despair is reflected in his leaving one physical prison to join another non physical named Harlem. It’s truly symbolic that even narrator himself fails to completely free from his neighborhood despite having attained middle-class status he must compel his conscience to live in a decrepit tenement in Harlem.
The Blues
Though the title of the story presents a suggestion that it is jazz a smooth, cool and consoling genre of music, the blues in the story represents something universal.

The narrator demonstrates the blues as “the tale the sufferings, delighted, and triumph” (Baldwin 1957). Given the definition therefore, the story depicts itself as a blues tale that it begins with the suffering Sonny and his brother, subsequently the growing sense of communion between them, and finally the triumph by them over alienation and pain they had gone through for a long time. Both brothers acknowledge that it’s not innovation that presents them the victory, but rather the light they got in a world full of darkness. The story much similar to the real music Sonny plays that attempts bring musicians to commune with their audience with intent to bridge differences while nurturing understanding and compassion between them to relieve them from

suffering.