James Baldwin Going To Meet The Man

The story, Sonny’s Blues, describes the lives of two brothers growing up in Harlem in the early 1960’s. Sonny and his brother are different in the way the go about life in general. They were both raised in the same household, yet they grew up to be totally different people. As the story progresses we see that both brothers have troubles in their lives and we get to see how each thinks and acts when facing such ordeals. While the brothers differ in the way they internalize and cope with their problems, they both show selfish characteristics, but ultimately feel remorseful for not being in each others’ lives.

James Baldwin’s short story “Sonny’s Blues” was a great tale of the struggles shared between two brothers in Harlem in 1957. This story is about two African American brothers who, unfortunately, grew apart as the aged. The plot shows the struggles the two brothers faced as they grew up in Harlem, and in return, the two drastically different paths they perused. James Baldwin was an African American who grew up in Harlem in the 1930s and 40s. Baldwin was the oldest of nine children, and grew up in a very poor family, having a very bad relationship with his stepfather. Baldwin followed in his stepfather’s footsteps in becoming a preacher, but as he was studying to do so, he realized that his true calling was to become a writer. Baldwin

The short story “Sonny’s Blues” by James Baldwin, is the tale of two brothers who grew up in Harlem. One brother is a school teacher, husband, and father, whom was left with the responsibility of looking after his younger brother Sonny. Sonny a troubled young man, struggling with his demons and his desire to be a musician. The brothers, born seven years apart, have a complicated relationship. That make it difficult to understand each other; however, the love and bond between them outweigh their differences. The diverse settings throughout the story positively and negatively influence each of these characters, in a plethora of ways.

“Sonny’s Blues” introduces two brothers who have differing mindsets about how to best cope with suffering. The narrator is Sonny’s responsible, unnamed older brother, who follows a very ordered path, using military service, marriage and teaching math to gain stability and escape the downward pull of Harlem. In contrast, younger brother Sonny lives his life like his music hero plays his jazz: improvising. Sonny experiments with drugs, skips school and eventually drops out, all the while feeding his obsession with piano. Sonny’s older brother sees no legitimacy in Sonny’s art and aspirations to become a musician. He disparagingly deems it “to be merely an excuse for the life he led”. The brothers are unable to set their differences aside, and are only reconnected in a time of immense grief, as the brother’s daughter, Grace, dies.

At the end of both stories both narrators made a point of wanting to overcome their boundaries and accepting their bothers lifestyle. For “Sonny’s Blues” the narrator of coping through the music and the needs of trying to get out of his environment. Music is what ends up being the light in the

Sonny’s Blues is a short story written by James Baldwin. The story takes place in Harlem during the early 1950’s. The story talks about two brothers working on their broken relationship. The story begins with the narrator reading the newspaper about his little brother Sonny getting arrested, because he was caught in a heroin bust. In the story the author James Baldwin uses a biblical allusion, a cup of trembling, to compare Sonny’s suffering to the suffering servant, since they have similar suffering. As you read the story and the verse you notice a lot of similarity between them. Reasons why, because characters in both the story and the verse feel trapped in where they live, most of them suffer in life, many seek and get guidance, and most of them heal in certain ways.

James Baldwin’s “Sonny’s Blues” is a story of how a distant and conflicting relationship between two brothers is saved by the powerful message within music. In “Sonny’s Blues” the music portrays a very powerful message. The story begins with Sonny being arrested for heroin use. Sonny’s older brother is a school teacher and did not want to believe that the news was true, “I didn’t want to believe that I’d ever see my brother going down, coming to nothing, all that light in his face gone out, in the condition I’d already seen so many others” (Baldwin 293). Sonny used his music and drugs to distance himself from all the negativity in his life.

Sonny’s Blues is a novella with Sonny and his brother a teacher as main characters; Sonny engaged in drug use and peddling an act that landed him prison where his brother visited him and eventually on release he lived with him. Sonny’s parents died at different times during the racial segregation epoch in America, they were African-Americans who suffered victimization. Before her mother’s death, she had instructed Sonny’s senior brother - a teacher- to take care of him because the surrounding world was dark symbolic for unfriendly. The theme of brotherly love begins when their mother requests them

Sonny's Blues is a short story written by James Baldwin. In this story, Baldwin helps us understand the different ways people experience pain and suffering. It is a story about two brothers and the way they cope with pain and suffering in dissimilar ways. As the story begins, Sonny was arrested for using heroine while his brother was a teacher at school. In the end, we see Sonny playing some blues in a club while his brother listens and this is when we learn that, the music helps the brothers to deal with their pain and suffering.

According to Liukkonen, James Baldwin is well known for his "novels on sexual and personal identity, and sharp essays on civil-rights struggle in the United States." "Sonny's Blues" is no exception to this. The story takes place in Harlem, New York in the 1950's and tells of the relationship between two brothers. The older brother, who is the narrator and a participant in the novel, remains unnamed throughout the story. The novel is about the struggles, failures and successes of these two African American brothers growing up in the intercity as a minority. The encounters that the narrator and his brother, Sonny, have throughout the story exemplify Baldwin's

"Sonny's Blues" opens with news that Sonny has been recently apprehended during a drug bust, which establishes that Sonny has had an ongoing problem with drug addiction, specifically heroin. While the narrator is apprehensive about contacting Sonny after this incident as the brother have lost touch over the years, he eventually reaches out to Sonny and gains insight into what Sonny has been doing during their estrangement; it is also during this time that the narrator recognizes that music is not only an artistic outlet for Sonny, but also provides an emotional and psychological catharsis for him and those that listen to his music. Sonny best describes his dependency on music as he talks to his brother after an old-fashioned revival meeting during which there was much singing. Sonny states,

Suffering is something that everyone has to persevere at some point in their life. One thing makes us unique is how we deal with these hardships. The characters in “Sonny’s Blues” endure many difficult situations. How they choose to deal with these situations effects their entire life. To begin the story, we see that the narrator’s brother Sonny has already dealt with his suffering by using heroin. Then the narrator’s daughter dies of polio, but his pain helped him reach out to Sonny. He brought Sonny into his home to live. The story then takes a turn, and it jumps back to before the boys parents died. Their mother tells a story to the narrator about his father. His father’s brother was hit by a car of white men and he died right in front of him. He never was the same after the incident. Then she made him promise to take care of Sonny and not let him fall no matter how hard it is. After the death of their parents Sonny expressed his yearning to be a musician to his brother, and he shot the idea down. Sonny pursued his dreams anyway, but went down the wrong paths. By the end of the story when the brothers are reunited the narrator finally

In “Going to Meet the Man” by James Baldwin the reader opens up with a scene that is considered one of the most horrific torture and murder scenes in history; or of the 1940’s. The story is so graphic that it takes you away from the main idea of racism, hatred and murder. Nevertheless, the theme of the story is a transformation of a young child into a stereotypical Black Southern-American hating bigot. Through dramatic detail Baldwin explains the mindset of a white southern police officer and how he came to hate Black-Americans. This was representative of the racial, violent black South because this exemplified what happens to most white-Americans and how they are brained washed unknowingly to hate anyone that does not resemble the same

James Baldwin’s “Notes of a Native Son” interweaves his own racial experiences with the ongoing chaos and claustrophobia in Harlem. Following the death of his father, a man “eaten up by paranoia,” the author embarks on an introspective journey, realizing how his identity is shaped by both the traits he inherits from his father and the experiences he has with racist attitudes and violence. Baldwin’s prose is as complex as the concepts he deals with, as he comes to the conclusion that hatred is a choice, not a fact of life.

James Baldwin, an African American author born in Harlem, was raised by his violent step-father, David. His father was a lay preacher who hated whites and felt that all whites would be judged as they deserve by a vengeful God. Usually, the father's anger was directed toward his son through violence. Baldwin's history, in part, aids him in his insight of racism within the family. He understands that racists are not born, but rather racist attitudes and behaviors are learned in the early stages of childhood. Baldwin's Going to Meet the Man is a perfect example of his capability to analyze the growth of a innocent child to a racist.