Sonny's Blues
While the tale of how we suffer, and how we are delighted, and how we may triumph is never new, it must always be heard," writes James Baldwin in his short story, Sonny's Blues. "There isn't any other tale to tell, it's the only light we've got in all this darkness." This might be called the theme of Sonny's Blues, and it comes at the end of a long descriptive passage about the playing of music -- of the blues, in particular -- and how truly playing music is difficult, dangerous, beautiful, and deep; that being intimate with one's instrument is akin to being intimate with one's life. Sonny's Blues is about being lost, and trying to be found, within the context of being a black man in this society; and of finding oneself as so many black men have, through the blues -- both as music, and as storytelling.
Sonny's Blues is ostensibly a story of two brothers, told in first person by Sonny's brother, whose name we never learn. The setting of this story is New York City's Harlem, a ghetto where most black men are living in virtual prisons, caught in poverty and marginalized by a society that hardly notices them.
The narrator is a schoolteacher and has just learned that his younger brother, Sonny, has been arrested in a heroin raid. "It was not to be believed....and at the same time I couldn't doubt it," the narrator says. "I was scared, scared for Sonny. He became real to me again." Sonny's trouble brings him smack into the center of his brother's life, and triggers a cascade of memories. (The novel does not follow a straight storyline, but intersperses past and present.) The narrator feels at time as if "my guts were going to come spilling out or that I was going to choke or scream. This would always be at a moment when I was remembering some specific thing Sonny had said or done."
After their parents had died, while Sonny was still a teenager, he'd decided to become a pianist, "playing for his life." But even with music, even while playing his piano, Sonny couldn't bear the rage and grief inside of him. He wasn't able to heal himself with music, and so he turned to heroin. Sonny tries to describe his emotional pain: "It's terrible...you walk these streets, black and funk and cold, and there's really not a living ass to talk to." This expresses the alienation of being black in this society.
In turn, the redemption and recognition of the jazz clubs is just the opposite. When the narrator goes with his brother to a club where Sonny will play, he receives an amazing welcome. "It turns out that everyone at the bar knew Sonny, or almost everyone; some were musicians...some were simply hangers-on, and some were there to hear Sonny play...I was in Sonny's world. Or rather: his kingdom. Here, it was not even a question that his veins bore royal blood." Black and funky and alone on the streets of a white man's world; royalty in the jazz clubs, where blacks play in the black of night.
But if blacks recognize each other in the rarefied smoky atmosphere of the jazz clubs, black society at large often doesn't even honor its own. It's sometimes impossible to earn a living as a musician -- something the narrator warned Sonny about after their mother died. The narrator doesn't even know who Charlie Parker is -- perhaps the greatest jazz musician of all time. If blacks themselves can't recognize the geniuses among them, what chance does Sonny have? "You'll have to be patient with me. Now. Who's this Parker character?" The narrator asks Sonny, who becomes sullen and turns his back. "He's just one of the greatest jazz musicians alive." Sonny, too, will turn out to be a creative genius.
After their mother died, the narrator felt responsible for his younger brother. But he doesn't understand Sonny's music, and tries to influence him to lead a practical life. Sonny says, "I ain't learning nothing in school. Even when I go." He then slams the window and says, "And I'm sick of the stink of these garbage cans." The garbage cans represent the poverty they are forced to live with.
Very literally, this is a story of the blues -- the blues as pain, and the blues as redemptive music -- in the context of being a black man. Both brothers are seeking some...
Sonny's Blues": Two brothers, two parallel lives James Baldwin's short story "Sonny's Blues" is contingent upon a comparison of the lives of two men, Sonny's brother and Sonny himself. Sonny's brother is a stable family man with a wife and two children, a respected schoolteacher. Sonny is a heroin addict and jazz musician. On a schematic level, they represent two sides of the African-American experience, as chronicled by Baldwin during
James Baldwin and "Sonny's Blues" African-American James Baldwin (1924-1987) was born in Harlem in New York City, the son of a Pentecostal minister (Kennedy and Gioia 53). Much of Baldwin's work, which includes three novels and numerous short stories and essays, describes conflicts, dilemmas, obstacles, and choices faced by African-Americans in modern-day white-dominated society, and ways, good and bad, that African-Americans either surmount or fall victim to racial prejudices, stereotypes, temptations
Sonny's brother wakes up and states, "Freedom lurked around us and I understood, at last, that he could help us to be free if we would listen, that he would never be free until we did" (47). Sonny was more free and living a life more true than his brother realized. The transformation in Sonny's brother is dramatic. Duncan writes, "By the end of the story, the narrator has gained
Daru is still trying to cling to a sense of morality; yet, the Arab himself shows how this will not work in a world of uncertainty because after he is set free, he goes to the police station himself. James Baldwin's "Sonny's Blues" Topic 6 James Baldwin's "Sonny's Blues" is an interesting tale of a lost soul, who finds his solace and ability to express himself through the art of music.
The following quotation, which appears in an annotated bibliography and is in reference to an article by Susan Robbins entitled "Anguish and Anger" that appeared in the Virginia English Bulletin in 1986, demonstrates this fact. Compares James Joyce's "Araby" and James Baldwin's "Sonny's Blues" in relation to the theme, "Anger and anguish are the fires that burn away innocence…" (59). Sonny gains his freedom from anger and anguish through his
Music becomes the symbol that changes the brothers. To emphasize the importance of the power of music, Baldwin's narrator cannot grasp what Sonny is speaking about until he sees him play. It is only when he experiences the sound does he finally "get it." Music bridges the chasm that has existed between these brothers for so long and it literally saves their relationship from further darkness and turmoil. Sonny's
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