Theme Of Darkness In Sonny's Blues

People often struggle to understand or fail to understand their setting of the surroundings and the relationships they are in. They can either accept the lightness or fight through the darkness. The darkness that is being shown in “Sonny's Blues” by James Baldwin is the reality of life, choosing to do good or bad by the choices you make. In the streets of Harlem as a community, there were youth that were struggling to make their way out of there. The struggles were affected by the drugs and crimes surrounding the community. It was nature to the streets of Harlem because they were so used to it, which is why escaping from the darkness in their lives was hard because the drugs were a part of their culture. Sonny a jazz musician who's struggling for his music to be found, finds himself

addicted to heroin as a stress free reliever, as he has past follow him and lay with him. While, using music to take away all his pain and create a structure in his life. He realizes that the darkness wasn’t the place for him to be anymore, he steps into the bright light of hope where he steps into a new life, without drugs. The comparison between the bright light and darkness. It leads into the truth and reality is used to represent the struggles between Sonny and the narrator in James Baldwin’s “Sonny’s Blues”.
The beginning of “Sonny’s Blues”, Baldwin shows a contrast between darkness and light as it starts with a heat of emotion, the narrator states “I stared at it in the swinging lights of the subway car, and in the faces and bodies of the people, and in my own face, trapped in the darkness which roared outside.”(20) This shows the battle of darkness because of the social society they live in, the narrator and his brother Sonny go through this everyday. Whether it’s seeing bad news in a newspaper, on TV or even visually seeing it. The darkness is the art of the community of Harlem that grew in the community and is now trapped, in their surroundings by physical, economic, and social barriers. The nature of darkness has overruled the minorities and non minorities of the Harlem community.
The narrator, an algebra teacher, observes a sense of a depressing similarity between his students and his brother, Sonny. The narrator is dreaded with fear for his students and Sonny, who is growing into a life of crime and drugs, as his brother did. The narrator notices that the cruel realities of the streets has taken away the possible light of being successful, from the lives of his brother and his students. The narrator makes an awaken connection between the darkness that Sonny faced and the darkness that the young boys are facing presently. This is pictured in the following quote: "These boys, now, were living as we'd been living then, they were growing up with a rush and their heads bumped abruptly against the low ceiling of their actual possibilities. They were filled with rage. All they really knew were two darknesses, the darkness of their lives, which was now closing in on them, and darkness of the movies, which had blinded them to that other darkness, and in which they now, vindictively, dreamed, at once more together than they were at any other time, and more alone." (160) These words of reality shows how one person's darkness can affect everyone else’s lives that leads into the path of darkness. The darkness represents the lack of opportunities that is available given back to the youth in the Harlem community. The young boys live in a dark reality where they do not know and are not familiar with light, which leads them into not have any bright future to look forward to.
In Sonny’s Blues, there is a pattern of the light and the darkness that is being shined on or being darkened in the youth community in Harlem.

The narrator brought up multiple points to think of towards the silence that was in the room and “the darkness growing against the window panes and you hear the street noises every now and again, or maybe the jangling beat of a tambourine from one of the churches close by, but it’s real quiet in the room.”(167) He describes the darkness as the older generation of his family that built the tradition of darkness in Harlem that his family carries for there to be no hope. He, also, remembers the children sitting on their mother's lap and he targets at “ The silence, the darkness coming, and the darkness in the faces frightens will never stop- will never die.”(167) “But something deep and watchful in the child knows that this is bound to end, is already ending..and when lights fills the room, the child is filled with darkness.”(168) In these imagery of words, the narrator shows that with the light of knowledge there is hope of success for the youth in Harlem. The lights gives the youth hope, even though they notice the light of

encouragement.