Sonny’s Blue by James Baldwin

            James Baldwin uses the story “Sonny Blues” to tell the story about his life in Harlem together with his brother in the 1950’s. The main story is about the character Sonny and how he used Jazz to evade his depressive state. In that particular period, James Baldwin can understand what Jazz means in terms of the genre being an art and a form of expression. The themes used in the story are mainly to express suffering that depressed people encounter in their daily lives. The main picture the antagonist tries to paint in the book is primarily about drugs and racism in context to depression. Harlem is a place associated with violence, poverty and vice and its reflection in Sonny’s Blues book is used to depict the origin of the greatness of jazz music in overcoming these problems and becoming a top genre.

In the opening of the story, Sonny, the brother to the narrator, is seen to have been captured, as the narrator reads in the newspaper, due to selling and using heroin. The feeling the narrator has, after that is described as having ice water in his veins. (LitCharts, np) The opening part is an introduction to the sufferings the narrator undergoes in the book. From an early stage, the use of visceral and frightening imagery helps Baldwin make the reader familiar what happens in a scene full of menace and disorientation. (LitCharts, np) It creates a bright and vivid picture that something terrible has arisen as the narrator suffered in a way to show that suffering is transmissible. It is a direct path to an exhibition of a form of inescapable darkness. It is a form of description of how the African-American community is threatened. The narrator further forms a discussion with the students and says:

“All they really knew were two darkness’s, 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.” (Grade Saver, np)

During their approach to adulthood, the narrator’s students are then brought to the realization of the limitations to their opportunities. He references Sonny, and how many of the students might have started to use drugs. Darkness is further echoed in the remark made regarding watching televisions screens instead of windows to depict how the boy’s attention has shifted from them on lives into entertainment. It is a light remark, but Baldwin had put it in such a way to how to show each form of sufferings had a totalled effect in the conditions around their mental states.

The complexity in the use of music in Sonny’s Blues is tremendous. The title’s allusion is the most obvious example, with a discrepancy that is described as odd. Sonny is not a blues but a jazz musician. In trying to understand Baldwin’s perspective, we see the broadness of the term blues: it is used as an expression of how people suffer, the way people become delighted and the way we may emerge victorious in the end. Jazz it thus contextually used to review the blues as a method or means of expression to the old colours. It is then made clear that when Sonny plays Jazz, he is also engaging in the blues. Jazz and blues are a critical form of African American music which makes it appropriate for the community’s focus in the story/.

Suffering is immense in Sonny’s Blues just as music is the centre of the story. The pain tolerated in the African American community is described by the darkness that engulfs Harlem. Darkness is used to show the suffering of the parents to the narrator experienced and what he is yet to experience. Darkness is present in every place the narrator goes, and he states that it is reflected in eyes that are lost, seeps through the windows and waits outside like a subway car. Sonny explains to the narrator of how suffering is inescapable. The assertion that Sonny’s brinks death through his addiction is given by the death of the speaker’s uncle. (Susana, np) In the book, suffering exhumes power that is both potentially redemptive and humanizing. Through suffering, people can understand how the other person is suffering and creates compassion that is true and acculturates. The narrator is then only able to realize that Sonny had been suffering through the death of his daughter.

The role of women in the book is limited and though not insignificant. Isabel is seen as a pillar to her brother Sonny during his homecoming as she gives him support. In the same respect, the narrator’s mother provides her son with her worldly wisdom that both sonny and the narrator should reconcile and strengthen their relationship. The narrator’s mother is seen to foresee Sonny’s mistreatment by the narrator, his struggles and her death which all come true and serves as a form of warning. Women who are not a part of the immediate family help to mend the relationship of the brothers and it is the song at the revival by a woman that brings Sonny and the narrator to begin a conversation.

It is clear as day to see that Sonny’ Blues had a different plan than the title exhibits. Deeper understanding is needed to see that Baldwin used the story to break down Jazz to its roots: suffering through depression and other social vices. Baldwin helps us understand that unlike recent times, the African American community was severely radicalized and the suffering that came about was as a result of that. Baldwin uses the book to show that suffering will not end or become easy, but through love, pain can be spared.

Works Cited

Grade Saver. Sonny’s Blues Summary and Analysis of “Sonny’s Blues”. 1999-2020. https://www.gradesaver.com/sonnys-blues/study-guide/summary-sonnys-blues. 10 August 2020.

LitCharts. Sonny’s Blues. 2020. https://www.litcharts.com/lit/sonny-s-blues/summary-and-analysis. 20 August 2020.

Sustana, Catherine. Analysis of “Sonny’s Blues” by James Baldwin. 9 August 2019. https://www.thoughtco.com/analysis-sonnys-blues-by-james-baldwin-2990467#:~:text=Plot%20of%20%22Sonny’s%20Blues%22&text=In%20contrast%2C%20his%20brother%2C%20Sonny,brother’s%20attraction%20to%20bebop%20music. 2020 August 2020.