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Analysis of James Baldwin’s Sonny’s Blues

By NASRULLAH MAMBROL on June 20, 2021

“Sonny’s Blues” is a first-person account by an AfricanAmerican schoolteacher trying to come to terms with his younger brother, Sonny, a jazz musician and sometime heroin addict. Some of James Baldwin ’s thematic preoccupations can be ascertained by noting the subtle variations and quasi-musical interplay of motifs: darkness (both atmospheric and existential), (in)audible attempts to articulate or testify, and the spatial coordinates of inside/outside (a complex motif entailing withdrawal into privacy, the filling of voids, and the impulse to escape or transcend compression).

The story begins as a retrospect from darkness. Shocked to read a newspaper account of his brother’s arrest for drug use, the unnamed narrator stares vacantly at his face reflected in the train window, “trapped in the darkness which roared outside” (831). Darkness recurs periodically throughout the narrator’s reminiscence and is often associated with the menace of the outer world. The narrator remembers Sundays at twilight, when as a child he felt “the darkness coming” while registering with anxiety the adults talking darkly of a dark past. His obscure intimations of the possibility of their death are not dispelled when someone turns on a light. Indeed, “when light fills the room, the child is filled with darkness. He knows that every time this happens he’s moved just a little closer to that darkness outside,” which he must endure as his ancestors always have (841–842). One of the incursions of darkness endured by his people has been the murderous running over by whites of his father’s brother, a musician. The narrator’s mother testifies that his father had “never in his life seen any thing as dark as that road after the lights of that car had gone away” (844). As an adult, the narrator muses on the less overt aspects of the darkness that envelops his students: “All they really knew were two darknesses, the darkness of their lives, which was now closing in on them, and the 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” (832).

The narrator begins to realize after many years of conflict with his brother that the blues and jazz represent the antithesis of this escape through distraction into alienated solitude. They constitute a negotiation and transformation of darkness and suffering. Creole, the leader of Sonny’s group, testifies with his bass how innovative jazz approaches to the blues (in this case, be bop) are retelling the tales of “how we suffer . . . and how we may triumph” because they are “the only light we’ve got in all this darkness” (862). However, the intense revelations of light are also risky and potentially destructive. Sitting “in a dark corner” watching his brother and his colleagues preparing to play in their “circle of light,” the narrator notes that they are “most careful not to step into [it] too suddenly,” as if “they would perish in flame” (860). The external dimensions of the darkness of suffering and the light’s threat of exposure are associated with social conditions and a historical legacy, but their existential coordinate is associated with the inner conditions of the self. As Sonny tries, haltingly, to communicate the parameters of where heroin had found him and taken him, his brother notices that “the sun had vanished, soon darkness would fall.” This temporal observation stimulates an intimation of another kind of encroaching darkness: the possibility of Sonny’s relapse, encapsulated by his brother’s warning “It can come again” (859).

The narrator sees Sonny in his students because they are approximately the age that his brother was when he started heroin use and are “filled with rage,” much as Sonny must have been, because of “the low ceiling of their actual possibilities” (832). The narrator’s perception, suffused with guilt and pathos, is acutely attuned to their laughter, which is “insular” with disenchantment (832). Given the story’s preoccupation with finding one’s voice and the riskiness of light, it is significant that when the narrator hears one of the boys whistling, “it seemed to be pouring out of him as though he were a bird . . . moving through all that harsh, bright air, only just holding its own through all those other sounds” (832). After one of his quarrels with Sonny, the emotionally inhibited narrator whistles a blues song “to myself” so as not to cry (852). Baldwin’s images of the (in)audible entail other forms of what might be called injured communication. The narrator inadvertently reveals his cold, uptight-emotional tendencies when he describes “a great block of ice” that “seemed to expand until I felt . . . I was going to choke or scream” (831). The scream of his brother is said to have haunted the narrator’s father the rest of his life, while screaming and choking converge in the memory of the narrator’s traumatized wife, who discovers their daughter, Grace, struggling for air enough to scream: “And when she did scream, it was the worst sound . . . that she’d ever heard in all her life, and she still hears it sometimes in her dreams” (852). The narrator also reports that his wife “will sometimes wake me up with a low, moaning, strangled sound” (852).

Music transmutes these injured sounds, as it does the suffering from which they issue. But the spirituals sung by the street singers, which express a people’s desire for liberation, are contemplated with the ambivalence that Baldwin shows toward African-American Christianity throughout his work. Although everyone has heard these songs, “not one of them had been rescued. Nor had they seen much in the way of rescue work being done around them” (853). The usually passive Sonny forcefully expresses his own ambivalence: “It’s repulsive to think you have to suffer that much” (856). That said, these spirituals not only constitute a major emotional foundation of the blues and jazz, they articulate the quasi-spiritual themes resonating in Baldwin’s description of Sonny’s wilderness wandering and prospects for salvation. Sonny’s piano playing is best understood, as his brother understands it, as a form of “testifying”—a bearing witness to suffering and redemptive aspiration in the manner of the spirituals (853). Thus, when Sonny finally takes his solo from the group, “Every now and again one of them seemed to say, amen” (863). However, before the withdrawn and inarticulate Sonny can speak for himself through his piano, he must first struggle “to find a way to listen” to the soul of the music and to the turbulent, not-yet music in his own soul (857). It is for this reason all the more painful to realize that “ nobody ’s listening.” This situation constitutes a tacit silence inasmuch as he might just as well not be playing. Ultimately, silence testifies to the absence of existential attunement. The narrator belatedly realizes that he “had held silence—so long!” while Sonny, in need of “human speech” and under the pressure of unarticulated feelings, was turning to heroin in the hope of relief (856).

Baldwin’s story insists on the need to escape constricted, pressure-filled spaces. The narrator’s insistence on conventional obligation and responsibility has long put him at odds with his hipster brother’s desire for self-liberation, which he judges an escape from wisdom (838). He feels threatened listening to Sonny’s old friend talk about drug highs, as a jukebox plays: “All this was carrying me some place I didn’t want to go. . . . It filled everything . . . with menace” (835). At the same time he resonates to the lifelong effects of the “smothering” Harlem ghetto, “filled with a hidden menace which was its very breath of life” (839). He remembers how the people “came down into the streets for light and air and found themselves encircled by disaster.” Those who escaped did so “as some animals amputate a leg and leave it in the trap” (839). The new government housing project fails as a haven, a cleared space, because “the hedges will never hold out the streets” and the windows “aren’t big enough to make space out of no space” (839).

Space is not merely a circumscribed set of physical or even social coordinates but an existential-psychological domain of self-definition. Sonny’s greatest pain has resulted from his failure to escape the confines of the sealed space of his privacy. Challenged, he “just moves back inside himself, where he can’t be reached” (840), to “the distant stillness in which he had always moved” (837). Baldwin coordinates inside/outside with the imagery of darkness/light, as when the narrator recalls how Sonny “looked out from the depths of his private life an animal waiting to be coaxed into the light” (837). His inaccessibility makes him seem “some sort of god, or monster . . . as though he were all wrapped up in some cloud, some fire” (850). Inside/ outside is also linked to the (in)audible inasmuch as Sonny’s blues entail the struggle to find a “way of getting it out—that storm inside” (857).

Spatial prepositions are made emphatic the only time Sonny speaks at length to his brother in the attempt to explain what heroin had done for him: “When I was most out of the world, I felt that I was in it, that I was with it, really, and I could play . . . it just came out of me, it was there” (858). Baldwin also deploys spatializing tropes to characterize the addicting quality inherent in music’s capacity to remove the listener from unsatisfying contexts, especially the constricted dimensions of the self. Sonny compares the affect of the street singer’s voice to the feeling of being “distant” yet “in control” that heroin produced— a feeling “you’ve got to have” (855). It had been the need “to clear a space to listen ”—and the inability to locate that place—that had deposited him “all by myself at the bottom of something” (858). Sonny believes that his use of drugs helped him reject unavoidable suffering, “to keep from drowning in it, to keep on top of it.” It had been a means of making him responsible, of providing some demonstrable reason, for that suffering. The conversation ends with a spatial displacement, as Sonny looks onto the street below and observes, “All that hatred and misery and love down there. It’s a wonder it doesn’t blow the avenue apart” (859). There is an especially significant spatializing term in Baldwin’s story. The narrator feels remorse that he has not followed his mother’s counsel regarding Sonny, “you got to let him know you’s there ” (845). And his account culminates with his being there to bear witness and to testify to what his brother undergoes “up there” on the illuminated bandstand.

Descending to the bottom without being destroyed becomes the challenge of Sonny’s playing. Creole, another “witness,” urges Sonny with his bass to “strike out for the deep water . . . that deep water and drowning were not the same thing—he had been there and he knew.” As the narrator watches his brother move “deep within” himself toward the music, he becomes aware of the void that must somehow be made into a livable space—how “awful” it must be for the musician to have “to fill” his instrument “with the breath of life, his own.” The narrator evokes, in terms that are both spatial and redolent with the (in)audible, the pressurized threat that making music entails: “The man who creates the music . . . is dealing with the roar rising from the void and imposing order on it as it hits the air . . . more terrible because it has no words” (861). Finishing, “Creole and Sonny let out their breath, both soaking wet,” as much from depths descended as from sweat (863).

The story’s recurring references to breath and to personal atmosphere can be profitably linked to the death by constriction of Grace, which functions as a kind of grace. Sitting alone in the dark after burying his daughter and thinking of Sonny, the narrator begins to recognize that “my trouble made his real” (852). Baldwin seems to suggest by this that the inwardness of self need not be hermetic and might provide a route to others. Yet the narrator also remarks “that not many people ever really hear” music, and even “on the rare occasions when something opens within, and the music enters, what we mainly hear, or hear corroborated, are personal, private, vanishing evocations” (861). This principle is perhaps applicable to the narrator’s own concluding description of Sonny’s playing, which does not evoke the music as music so much as the thematic burden the brother is capable of hearing or would like to think he heard. In accord with this principle, the narrator reveals a newfound peace of mind, with but a residue of unease, when he designates the drink he sends his brother “the very cup of trembling” as it glows in the stage lights and shakes with the playing of the band (864). This designation arises from the same biblical source as the spirituals, being an audible renunciation, delivered by a prophet, of God’s threat to destroy a community: “Therefore now hear this, thou afflicted and drunken, but not with wine. . . . Behold I have taken out of thine hand the cup of trembling, even the dregs of the cup of my fury; thou shalt drink it no more” (Isaiah 51:21–22).

Literary Criticism of James Baldwin

BIBLIOGRAPHY Baldwin, James. “Sonny’s Blues.” In Early Novels and Stories. New York: Library of America, 1998. Jones, Jacqueline C. “Finding a Way to Listen: The Emergence of the Hero as an Artist in James Baldwin’s ‘Sonny’s Blues.’ ” CLA Journal 42, no. 4 (1999): 462–482. Sherrard, Tracey. “Sonny’s Bebop: Baldwin’s ‘Blues Text’ as Intracultural Critique.” African American Review 32, no. 4 (Winter 1998): 691–704.

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“Sonny’s Blues” by James Baldwin: Analysis

“Sonny’s Blues” by James Baldwin wrote, which was first published in Partisan Review in 1957, later appeared in Baldwin’s 1965 collection of short stories, “Going to Meet the Man.”

“Sonny’s Blues” by James Baldwin

Table of Contents

“Sonny’s Blues” by James Baldwin wrote, which was first published in Partisan Review in 1957, later appeared in Baldwin’s 1965 collection of short stories, “Going to Meet the Man.” Since its publication, “Sonny’s Blues” has gained widespread critical acclaim and popularity, and it has become one of Baldwin’s most celebrated works. The story has appeared in numerous anthologies, and scholars have analyzed and discussed it extensively, particularly for its themes of brotherhood, race, and music. Additionally, it has inspired adaptations for both the stage and screen, demonstrating the enduring impact and relevance of Baldwin’s work.

Main Events in “Sonny’s Blues” by James Baldwin

• The narrator, a high school teacher in Harlem, learns that his younger brother, Sonny, has been arrested for using and selling drugs.
• The narrator reflects on their childhood and the strained relationship between him and Sonny due to their differing personalities and experiences.
• Sonny is released from prison and comes to live with the narrator and his family.
• The narrator witnesses Sonny play jazz piano at a club, and is struck by the power and emotion of his music.
• Sonny explains to the narrator that playing jazz is his way of expressing the pain and suffering he has experienced in his life.
• The narrator becomes more empathetic towards Sonny and begins to understand the challenges he has faced as a black man in America.
• The narrator visits his mother and learns about the family’s history of suffering, including the death of their uncle, a heroin addict.
• Sonny invites the narrator to hear him play at a concert, where he performs a powerful and emotional piece that moves the audience.
• After the concert, the brothers reconcile and have a deep conversation about their past and future.
• The story ends with the narrator watching Sonny play, feeling a sense of connection and understanding that he never thought was possible between them.

Literary Devices in “Sonny’s Blues” by James Baldwin

1. Symbolism

• Darkness: Represents suffering, fear, and the unknown. “All I know about darkness is what it feels like and what it smells like.”
• Light: Symbolizes hope, understanding, and moments of clarity. “Then the lights would begin to go out… and something would begin to gleam.”
• Music (The Blues): Symbolizes Sonny’s emotional expression, his way of processing pain, and a connection to a shared cultural heritage. “…the only light we could see… was the light from the juke box… I listened to Sonny.”

2. Metaphor

• Suffering as a cup of trembling: Conveys the overwhelming nature of pain, despair, and addiction. “…please try to find out what goes on inside you, in order to create… I want to know how much suffering you’ve had to endure to make you tell such stories – like the one about the woman… holding that cup of trembling.”
• Heroin as a means of control: Sonny describes how the drug makes him feel powerful against life’s struggles. “It makes you feel in control. Sometimes you’ve got to have that feeling.”
• Darkness is like a swallowed razor blade: Emphasizes the sharp, cutting pain of living in inner turmoil. “It’s terrible sometimes, inside… that’s what’s the matter with Creole. … He was always in the dark… It’s like a razor blade there.”
• The subway as an inescapable force: The claustrophobic environment mirrors the narrator’s internal struggle with his brother’s problems. “I read it, and I couldn’t believe it, and I read it again. Then perhaps I just stared at it, at the newsprint spelling out his name, spelling out the story. I stared at it in the swinging lights of the subway car…”

4. Personification

• Darkness with a presence: Used to give darkness a tangible and oppressive quality. “But houses exactly like the houses of our past yet dominated the landscape, boys exactly like the boys we once had been found themselves smothering in these houses, came down into the streets for light and air, and found themselves encircled by disaster.”
• Vivid descriptions of Harlem: Baldwin paints a detailed picture of the neighborhood, evoking its atmosphere and the challenges faced by residents. “…rows of houses, dark brown and dark grey… the babysitters, and the boys, and the shuffleboard games, and the tired, dissipated women…”

6. Foreshadowing

• Sonny’s early struggles: Hints at Sonny’s future path with addiction and trouble. “Heroin… It was not like marijuana. It was something special.”
• The narrator’s job as a teacher: Despite his efforts to instruct and protect younger generations, his own family faces the same hardships.
• The mother’s plea: She begs the narrator to care for his brother, unaware her words foreshadow Sonny’s struggle with addiction.

8. Allusion

• Biblical References: Allusions to the Bible add depth and resonance to themes of struggle, suffering, and redemption.
• Street slang and dialect: Incorporating the natural language of Harlem provides authenticity and a sense of place.
• Shifting tones: The text moves between despair, hope, frustration, and resignation, mirroring the complex relationship between the brothers.

11. First-Person Narration

• Limited perspective: The story is filtered through the narrator’s viewpoint, emphasizing his emotional journey.

12. Retrospective Narration

• Memories and Reflections: The narrator’s looking back on past events allows for self-exploration and understanding.

13. Juxtaposition

• Contrasting the brothers’ lives: Emphasizes differences in how they cope with life’s struggles.

14. Dialogue

• Reveals character and conflict The conversations between the brothers are raw and emotionally revealing.

15. Structure

• Musical composition: The way the story weaves in and out of memory and the present moment mimics the structure of a jazz song.

Characterization in “Sonny’s Blues” by James Baldwin

The narrator.

• “I didn’t like what I saw. I gave the money to Sonny. There wasn’t any way I could have stopped him.”
• “My trouble made his real.”
• Transformation: Through Sonny’s music and their shared experiences of suffering, he begins to see beyond the labels of “addict” and “criminal.” The final scene suggests a newfound compassion and the possibility of a deeper relationship with his brother.
• “Tell me what it feels like, Sonny, when you’re out there.”
• “Sometimes, you’ve got to have that feeling… to keep from shaking to pieces.”
• “For, while the tale of how we suffer, and how we are delighted, and how we may triumph is never new, it always must be heard. There isn’t any other tale to tell, it’s the only light we’ve got in all this darkness.”
• “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 gets with him.”
• Voice of Shared Experience: Her stories reveal the harsh realities of life and foreshadow the generational struggles faced by both brothers.
• Innocence and Hope: Represents the possibility of a life outside the cycle of pain and addiction. The narrator’s desire to protect her mirrors his fear for Sonny.
• Catalyst for Change: Her presence, Sonny’s connection with her, and the narrator’s reflections on her vulnerabilities push him to confront his own fears and offer Sonny support.
• Embodiment of Danger: Symbolic of the destructive forces Sonny grapples with. Creole represents addiction’s power and the world the narrator desperately wants Sonny to avoid.

Significance of Characterization

Baldwin’s masterful characterization doesn’t present merely individuals but rather complex figures wrestling with:

• Generational Trauma: The lasting effects of racism and poverty.
• Internalized Pain: Individual ways of coping with suffering and hardship.
• The Power of Connection: The search for understanding, compassion, and shared experiences as a pathway towards healing.

Major Themes in “Sonny’s Blues” by James Baldwin

• Suffering and Survival: Suffering permeates the lives of the characters in “Sonny’s Blues.” Both Sonny and the narrator bear emotional scars – the lingering pain of their father’s tragic death, the fear and hardship of living in Harlem, and the pervasive effects of racism. Baldwin presents different ways of coping with this suffering. Sonny turns to heroin to numb his pain, a path of self-destruction. The narrator tries to distance himself from the darkness, seeking stability in his profession and family. However, the death of his daughter Grace forces him to confront suffering head-on. References like “the darkness outside,” the “cup of trembling,” and the narrator’s internal struggle to understand Sonny’s pain showcase the constant presence and different manifestations of suffering in the story.
• The Power of Music (and Art): Music, specifically the blues, is Sonny’s salvation. It becomes a language for him to express the depth of his suffering and connect with others on an emotional level. Baldwin describes how jazz musicians channel collective pain, struggle, and a yearning for a better life into their art. In the story’s climactic scene, as Sonny plays at the nightclub, the music becomes a shared experience. The narrator, filled with both pain and pride, finally begins to understand his brother, and the audience witnesses Sonny’s transformation of despair into something beautiful. Music becomes a force for catharsis, survival, and a means to find light in the darkness.
• Family and Responsibility: The bond between the brothers is complex and fraught. The narrator initially distances himself from Sonny’s troubles, burdened by the weight of his mother’s plea to look after his brother. Yet, responsibility and a sense of familial obligation gradually chip away at his protective wall. The tragedy of his daughter’s death and a newfound understanding of Sonny’s inner world ignite a turning point. The story concludes with a hint of reconciliation, suggesting that genuine support and empathy within the family might be the start of a healing process.
• Imprisonment (Literal and Metaphorical): Imprisonment serves as both a literal reality for Sonny, who faces incarceration for drug offenses, and as a metaphor for broader societal constraints. The narrator frequently refers to Harlem as a trap, a harsh environment that limits opportunities and breeds despair. The brothers feel imprisoned by social forces, racial injustice, and their own personal demons. Sonny’s addiction becomes another form of imprisonment, a self-imposed but ultimately destructive means to escape the harsh realities of his life.
• Redemption and Hope: Despite the story’s focus on darkness and suffering, “Sonny’s Blues” doesn’t end in despair. The final scene at the nightclub offers a glimmer of hope. The music serves as an act of redemption for Sonny, a path to acknowledge his pain and transform it into something profound. Additionally, the narrator’s gradual understanding of his brother and willingness to connect despite past differences hint at the potential for reconciliation and healing. While the story doesn’t provide easy answers, it suggests that redemption is possible through shared understanding, the creative expression of pain, and a recognition of our common humanity.

Questions and Thesis Statements about “Sonny’s Blues” by James Baldwin

• What is the significance of music in “Sonny’s Blues” by James Baldwin?
• Thesis statement: Music plays a crucial role in “Sonny’s Blues” by James Baldwin, serving as a metaphor for the characters’ emotional states and a vehicle for self-expression, communication, and healing.
• How does the theme of identity manifest in “Sonny’s Blues” by James Baldwin?
• Thesis statement: “Sonny’s Blues” by James Baldwin explores the theme of identity through the characters of Sonny and his brother, who struggle to reconcile their past, present, and future selves, and through their interactions with the surrounding community and the larger social and historical contexts.
• What is the role of addiction in “Sonny’s Blues” by James Baldwin?
• Thesis statement: The theme of addiction is a central concern in “Sonny’s Blues” by James Baldwin, portraying the destructive power of substance abuse, the cycle of addiction, and the struggles of recovery and redemption.
• How does the setting of Harlem shape the narrative of “Sonny’s Blues” by James Baldwin?
• Thesis statement: The setting of Harlem in “Sonny’s Blues” by James Baldwin serves as a microcosm of the larger socio-cultural and political forces that shape the lives and experiences of the characters, highlighting issues of poverty, racism, violence, and cultural identity.
• What is the significance of family relationships in “Sonny’s Blues” by James Baldwin?
• Thesis statement: “Sonny’s Blues” by James Baldwin explores the complex dynamics of family relationships, particularly between siblings, revealing tensions, conflicts, and reconciliations that reflect broader themes of love, loss, and redemption.

Literary Theories and Interpretation of “Sonny’s Blues” by James Baldwin

• Psychoanalytic theory : You could explore how the characters’ unconscious desires, conflicts, traumas, and defenses shape their actions and relationships. For example, you could examine how Sonny’s addiction is a result of his repressed childhood memories of his father’s brother’s death, or how the narrator’s denial of Sonny’s musical talent is a projection of his own insecurity and guilt.
• Marxist theory : You could analyze how the story reflects the social and economic conditions of African Americans in 1950s Harlem, and how these conditions influence the characters’ choices and opportunities. For example, you could discuss how Sonny’s blues music is a form of resistance and expression against the oppression and exploitation of racism and capitalism, or how the narrator’s teaching career is a compromise between his ideals and his material needs.
• Feminist theory : You could examine how the story portrays gender roles and relations among the characters, and how these roles and relations affect their identities and agency. For example, you could explore how the female characters in the story (such as Isabel, Grace, or Sonny’s mother) are marginalized or silenced by the male-dominated society, or how Sonny’s relationship with his brother is influenced by their different expectations of masculinity.
• Postcolonial theory : You could investigate how the story deals with issues of cultural identity, hybridity, diaspora, and resistance among African Americans in a predominantly white society. For example, you could analyze how Sonny’s blues music incorporates elements from both African American and European traditions, creating a new form of cultural expression that challenges stereotypes and norms.

Short Question-Answers About “Sonny’s Blues” by James Baldwin

• What is the relationship between Sonny and his brother in “Sonny’s Blues” by James Baldwin?

In “Sonny’s Blues” by James Baldwin, Sonny and his brother have a strained relationship due to their different lifestyles and values. Sonny is a jazz musician who struggles with addiction, while his brother is a schoolteacher who tries to distance himself from the gritty reality of Harlem. However, their shared history and the tragic events that befall their family bring them closer together, as they attempt to understand each other’s perspectives and find a way to connect through music.

• How does music serve as a source of healing in “Sonny’s Blues” by James Baldwin?

In “Sonny’s Blues” by James Baldwin, music serves as a powerful tool for healing and self-expression. Sonny, the protagonist, uses jazz as a means of coping with his trauma and expressing his emotions. Through his music, he communicates his pain, his hopes, and his dreams to his brother and the world, creating a sense of connection and community. The transformative power of music is also evident in the final scene, where the audience at the nightclub is united in their appreciation of Sonny’s performance, transcending their differences and experiencing a moment of collective joy and catharsis.

• What is the role of religion in “Sonny’s Blues” by James Baldwin?

Religion plays a significant role in “Sonny’s Blues” by James Baldwin, reflecting the characters’ search for meaning and redemption in a world marked by suffering and injustice. The narrator, Sonny’s brother, is a devout Christian who struggles to reconcile his faith with the realities of his life in Harlem. Sonny, on the other hand, turns to drugs and music as a form of escape from the constraints of religion and society. However, in the end, both characters find a sense of spiritual renewal through their shared experiences and the power of music, suggesting that religion and art can coexist and complement each other.

• How does the theme of race intersect with other themes in “Sonny’s Blues” by James Baldwin?

The theme of race intersects with other themes in “Sonny’s Blues” by James Baldwin, highlighting the complex ways in which identity, culture, and history intersect in the lives of the characters. For instance, the racial tensions and injustices of Harlem inform the characters’ experiences of poverty, violence, and discrimination. The theme of addiction also intersects with race, as Sonny’s struggle with drugs is linked to the trauma of growing up in a racially oppressive environment. Similarly, the theme of music reflects the African-American cultural heritage and its significance as a form of resistance and self-expression in the face of oppression.

Literary Works Similar to “Sonny’s Blues” by James Baldwin

Works featuring similar themes and concerns:.

• Go Tell It On the Mountain (James Baldwin): A novel exploring themes of faith, family, and the complexities of growing up Black in Harlem. Baldwin’s insightful exploration of these themes echoes those found in “Sonny’s Blues.”
• Invisible Man (Ralph Ellison): This seminal work examines race and identity, portraying a Black man’s struggle against the forces of social invisibility. Its themes of isolation and the search for individuality resonate strongly with “Sonny’s Blues.”
• Giovanni’s Room (James Baldwin): A complex exploration of love, sexuality, and self-acceptance set against societal expectations. Like “Sonny’s Blues,” it focuses on an individual grappling with identity in a world that seeks to define him.
• Native Son (Richard Wright): A powerful and controversial novel about a young Black man whose life is shaped by poverty, racism, and systemic oppression. Explores the desperation born from marginalization, a theme mirrored in “Sonny’s Blues.”
• The Bluest Eye (Toni Morrison): A story about the destructive forces of internalized racism as a young Black girl longs for the unattainable standards of white beauty. Shares similar concerns regarding identity, social pressure, and the harsh realities faced by marginalized communities.

Reason for Similarity: These works share with “Sonny’s Blues” a focus on:

• The African American Experience: The novels delves into the complexities of race, identity, and social injustice.
• The Search for Connection: Characters grapple with isolation and yearn for genuine understanding within families and society at large.
• The Power of Art: Often explores the role of music, literature, or other creative outlets in processing pain and finding a voice for self-expression.

Suggested Readings: “Sonny’s Blues” by James Baldwin

• Nadel, Alan. Invisible Criticism: Ralph Ellison and the American Canon. University of Iowa Press, 1988. (Includes insightful analysis on “Sonny’s Blues” and its relationship to Ellison’s work).
• O’Neale, Sondra. “Reconstruction of the Composite Self: New Images of Black Women in Fiction by Baldwin, Walker, and Morrison.” Stony the Road: Essays on the African American Literary Tradition , edited by T. Gates, Jr.. Cambridge University Press, 1989. (Provides a strong feminist reading of “Sonny’s Blues”).

Articles in Scholarly Journals

• Eckman, Barbara. “Sonny’s Blues: James Baldwin’s Image of Black Community.” Negro American Literature Forum, vol. 4, no. 2, 1970, pp. 56–60. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/3041470.
• Matlack, Cynthia. “Music Lessons: The Narrator of ‘Sonny’s Blues’.” James Baldwin Review, vol. 1, 2015, pp. 72-85. [invalid URL removed].

Articles/Websites

• Als, Hilton. “The Creative Impulse” The New Yorker , 25 June, 2009. https://studentjournals.anu.edu.au/index.php/burgmann/article/download/99/97 (Offers a contemporary perspective and analysis).
• “Sonny’s Blues | Encyclopedia.com.” https://www.encyclopedia.com/arts/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/sonnys-blues-james-baldwin-1965 (Provides a helpful overview, plot summary, and critical commentary).

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Literary Analysis of "Sonny's Blues" by James Baldwin

Updated 25 June 2022

Subject Addiction ,  Books ,  Communication ,  Literary Genres

Downloads 54

Category Family ,  Literature ,  Music

Topic Big Brother ,  Drug Addiction ,  Family Relationships ,  Family Values ,  Jazz ,  Jazz Concert ,  Jazz Music ,  Literary Criticism ,  Literary Devices ,  Music Therapy ,  Piano ,  Short Story ,  Sonny'S Blues

The short story "Sonny's Blues" by James Baldwin

The short story "Sonny's Blues" by James Baldwin is a literary analysis of racism in the African American community. The work shows the gradual shedding of prejudice and its themes of music and religion. However, there are a few points that need to be explored to fully appreciate the story. In this article, we'll discuss a few of those themes to help you understand the short story's meaning and context.

James Baldwin's "Sonny's Blues" is a short story about the African-American community

In the 1950s, a short story called "Sonny's Blues" by James Baldwin arose to represent the polar opposites of the African-American community. Written before the Civil Rights Movement, the story shows the struggles of a white Algebra teacher and his black jazz pianist student, Sonny. While the story is written in flashback, the protagonist is a well-known figure in the black community, as his brother has a difficult time understanding the inner workings of his black community. This story also shows the importance of the nuances of setting in short fiction.

The story is set in New York City

The story is set in New York City, where Baldwin was born and raised. The city was at that time the center of black intellectual life in America. Baldwin began preaching at the Fireside Pentecostal Assembly in the Bronx in 1938. This early theological training can be heard throughout Baldwin's work, including the religious themes that pervade the story. By 1944, Baldwin had renounced his calling and had moved to Greenwich Village, where he became acquainted with a number of important writers and artists.

It shows the gradual shedding of prejudice

One of the most interesting elements of Sonny Blues is the way in which the narrator acknowledges the influence of music in keeping Sonny free. The narrator also notes that the blues has a way of reinforcing the scapegoat metaphor in the story. In addition, the narrator shows how a blues song can help anyone to stay true to themselves.

Throughout the novel, Sonny's struggles with the blues are caused by the circumstances of his race, the limitations of economic opportunity, and the natural human compulsion to suffer. It shows how this history of prejudice and oppression has affected the narrator and his family. His brother also describes the poverty and neglect in his Harlem neighborhood. In Sonny Blues, it's clear that racism, even in its most basic form, has had a profound impact on the lives of his family, his friends, and society in general.

It is about music

Sonny's music, like his words, is a powerful vehicle for his pain and suffering. In his letter to his brother from prison, Sonny tries to explain his pain, but his words are so inarticulate that they are almost inaudible. Music, he explains, is his way of communicating with his brother and he uses it as a therapeutic means to release his pain and guilt. In the novel, music becomes an almost mystical spiritual medium, as it helps Sonny release his pain and guilt.

Music is Sonny's life. The narrator senses that Sonny plays music to cope with his pain, and he tells the narrator that drugs and alcohol are bad for him, but they are a good way to escape his problems. Yet, in the end, music makes him a different person. Sonny's music is a metaphor for life, and it is a powerful metaphor for coping with pain and desperation.

It has religious themes

Sonny's Blues' theme of forgiveness is a strong religious one. The narrator, who is in the same situation as his brother, tries desperately to get out of Harlem to find the salvation he longs for. The biblical theme of forgiveness is also evident throughout the novel, as the narrator quotes Matthew 6:14, "Unless you repent of your sins, your heavenly Father will not forgive you." Similarly, the narrator takes the role of his brother's keeper and accepts his responsibilities. The story hits rock bottom but eventually softens his heart and his relationship with his brother.

Sonny's name evokes a Christ figure, and the New Testament message refers to a cup of trembling as the "cup of Gethsemane." The cup represents the atonement of sin for those who believe and offers hope for eternal life. As a Christian, Sonny's name echoes Christ's special relationship with Jesus. Moreover, he is a scapegoat and a hopeful king.

It is about suffering

Sonny's Blues is a novel that explores the concept of individual suffering. Each character goes through some type of personal struggle that wears them down. Sonny's suffering manifests itself in many different ways, including music, drugs, and the recurring nightmares of his character. The narrator, meanwhile, seems to live a better life than Sonny. His obsession with avoiding pain and suffering is detrimental to his health and wellbeing.

James Baldwin uses multiple symbols to communicate his themes. For example, his characters have different personalities, and his protagonist is black. The narrator is an African American, and he is a jazz musician, but he is also a heroin addict. The theme of suffering is also represented by the recurring image of darkness, the inability to communicate, and the spatial coordinates of inside and outside. This book is about suffering and how it affects the relationships in our lives.

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Analysis of "Sonny's Blues" by James Baldwin

Baldwin's story was published in the height of the Civil Rights Era

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"Sonny's Blues" by James Baldwin was first published in 1957, which places it at the heart of the civil rights movement in the United States. That's three years after Brown v. Board of Education , two years after Rosa Parks refused to sit at the back of the bus, six years before Martin Luther King, Jr. , delivered his "I Have a Dream" speech and seven years before President Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 .

Plot of "Sonny's Blues"

The story opens with the first-person narrator reading in the newspaper that his younger brother — from whom he is estranged — has been arrested for selling and using heroin. The brothers grew up in Harlem , where the narrator still lives. The narrator is a high school algebra teacher and he is a responsible husband and father. In contrast, his brother, Sonny, is a musician who has led a much wilder life.

For several months after the arrest, the narrator does not contact Sonny. He disapproves of, and worries about, his brother's drug use and he is alienated by his brother's attraction to bebop music. But after the narrator's daughter dies of polio , he feels compelled to reach out to Sonny.

When Sonny is released from prison, he moves in with his brother's family. After a couple of weeks, Sonny invites the narrator to come to hear him play piano at a nightclub. The narrator accepts the invitation because he wants to understand his brother better. At the club, the narrator begins to appreciate the value of Sonny's music as a response to suffering and he sends over a drink to show his respect.

Inescapable Darkness

Throughout the story, darkness is used to symbolize the threats that menace the African-American community. When the narrator discusses his students, he says:

"All they really knew were two darknesses, the darkness of their lives, which was now closing in on them, and the darkness of the movies, which had blinded them to that other darkness."

As his students approach adulthood, they realize how limited their opportunities will be. The narrator laments that many of them may already be using drugs, just as Sonny did, and that perhaps the drugs will do "more for them than algebra could." The darkness of the movies echoed later in a comment about watching TV screens rather than windows, suggests that entertainment has drawn the boys' attention away from their own lives.

As the narrator and Sonny ride in a cab toward Harlem — "the vivid, killing streets of our childhood" — the streets "darken with dark people." The narrator points out that nothing has really changed since their childhood. He notes that:

"… houses exactly like the houses of our past yet dominated the landscape, boys exactly like the boys we once had been found themselves smothering in these houses, came down into the streets for light and air, and found themselves encircled by disaster."

Though both Sonny and the narrator have traveled the world by enlisting in the military, they have both ended up back in Harlem. And though the narrator in some ways has escaped the "darkness" of his childhood by getting a respectable job and starting a family, he realizes that his children are facing all the same challenges he faced.

His situation doesn't seem much different from that of the older people he remembers from childhood.

"The darkness outside is what the old folks have been talking about. It's what they've come from. It's what they endure. The child knows that they won't talk any more because if he knows too much about what's happened to them , he'll know too much too soon, about what's going to happen to him ."

The sense of prophecy here — the certainty of "what's going to happen" — shows a resignation to the inevitable. The "old folks" address the imminent darkness with silence because there's nothing they can do about it.

A Different Kind of Light

The nightclub where Sonny plays is very dark. It's on "a short, dark street," and the narrator tells us that "the lights were very dim in this room and we couldn't see."

Yet there is a sense that this darkness provides safety for Sonny, rather than menace. The supportive older musician Creole "erupt[s] out of all that atmospheric lighting" and tells Sonny, "I been sitting right here … waiting for you." For Sonny, the answer to suffering may lie within the darkness, not in escaping it.

Looking at the light on the bandstand, the narrator tells us that the musicians are "careful not to step into that circle of light too suddenly: that if they moved into the light too suddenly, without thinking, they would perish in the flame."

Yet when the musicians start to play, "the lights on the bandstand, on the quartet, turned to a kind of indigo. Then they all looked different there." Note the phrase "on the quartet": it's important that the musicians are working as a group. Together they're making something new, and the light changes and becomes accessible to them. They haven't done this "without thinking." Rather, they've done it with hard work and "torment."

Though the story is told with music rather than words, the narrator still describes the music as a conversation among the players, and he talks about Creole and Sonny having a "dialogue." This wordless conversation among the musicians contrasts with the resigned silence of the "old folks." 

As Baldwin writes:

"For, while the tale of how we suffer, and how we are delighted, and how we may triumph is never new, it always must be heard. There isn't any other tale to tell, it's the only light we've got in all this darkness."

Instead of trying to find individual escape routes from the darkness, they are improvising together to create a new kind of light. 

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Sonny’s Blues

James baldwin, ask litcharts ai: the answer to your questions.

Cycles of Suffering

The central concern of “Sonny’s Blues” is suffering: Baldwin emphasizes that suffering is universal, and that it is also cyclical—that suffering tends to lead to more suffering. Baldwin demonstrates the effects of suffering on several different scales: he shows the way suffering affects an individual life, the way it affects a family throughout generations, and the way it affects a society overall.

The story—set in 1950s Harlem, a New York neighborhood that was then at…

Family Bonds

In “Sonny’s Blues,” Baldwin asks how much family members owe to one another, and he examines the fallout when familial compassion fails and obligations are only halfheartedly met. The most explicit example of this is the narrator ’s failure for most of the story to live up to his promise to his mother that he would always be there for Sonny . Another example of a halfheartedly met family obligation is when the narrator’s wife’s…

Passion, Restraint, and Control

The narrator and Sonny , as black men in America, live in a world that tries to control them. They also live in a world that seems completely overwhelming because it is so saturated with suffering. Baldwin sets up the two brothers as being emblematic of two diverging responses to this pervasive suffering. One chooses a life of passion, idolizing artistic expression and casting aside a traditional life in order to find meaning, and the…

Salvation and Relief

Each of the characters in “Sonny’s Blues” is living a life that is, in some way, governed by suffering, but it is the significant instances of salvation and relief that prevent “Sonny’s Blues” from being utterly hopeless and tragic. Salvation and relief come in many forms in the story, some better than others, but it is the final invocation of the “ cup of trembling ” (a quote from the Biblical Book of Isaiah) that…

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Literary Analysis Of Sonny's Blues By James Baldwin

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