Character Traits In Sonny's Blues

Music is more than just lyrics, it is seen as a way to express feelings. A simple song can be a combination of deeper meanings. This is seen in James Baldwin’s “Sonny’s Blues” when Sonny finally finds a way to express himself and his struggles of life. Sonny faces many struggles while living in Harlem such as poverty, being African American, and being confined in a community that is known for being the lower part of life. Within his struggles Sonny finds a love for music. This comes in handy when his relationship with his brother is` struggling. Music gives Sonny an opportunity to reconnect with his brother since he did not understand what he was going through and express his struggles. Although Sonny has many struggles throughout life, He’s

The underlining main point in this story is hope. There are many factors that challenge the life of these characters in this story, but for me, in much aspect this story was reality. The turning point of this story is when Sonny invites his brother to the nightclub in downtown Harlem. Although Sonny’s brother was hesitant he knew it was needed, if he ever desired to have a strong relationship with his brother. Sonny’s brother says “Yet it was clear that, for them, I was only Sonny’s brother. Here I was in Sonny’s world. Or rather: his kingdom. Here, it was not even a question that his veins bore royal blood” (Baldwin). For once the narrator was able to see that his brother was a changed person, and that he did honestly love music. My comparison to this moment would have to be the moment that I took my mom out to eat last Mothers day.

In the short story “Sonny’s Blues” by James Baldwin a schoolteacher from the city of Harlem struggles with life and figuring out how to helped his troubled brother. All though named Sonny’s Blues the main character is actually Sonny’s brother who is the narrator and goes through his life and how he reacts to the many problems his younger brother has come into. The brothers grew up in the poverty stricken city of Harlem where the brothers had to avoid drugs and violence constantly. Growing up, Sonny struggled to stay out of trouble and ended up making some bad decisions throughout his life and ends up landing him in jail and addicted to heroin. The un-named brother of Sonny who is the narrator of the story begins to

Sonny had learned his own ways to deal with the “ambiguity and irony of Negro life” since leaving prison. Sonny had discovered a way to find his freedom that worked best for him and that was through music. He started to play Bebop. By playing his music he let go of his frustrations that came with being another unsafe black person living in this place. His father would always be negative to his mother when she would bring up the idea of wanting to move to another neighborhood. He would think that any place they could move to would be the same and all be unsafe for children and for anybody. Through playing and being a part of music Sonny had discovered a solution to his marginalization and being left alone from his own society. Sonny was able to reconnect with African Diaspora by learning to play blues music and Bepop. He was then able to escape the social and economic issues that he faced living in the ghetto which also allows this reconnection to represent his roots. This music was his solution and only way that Sonny could feel free. When Sonny would play blues, his brother and many other people were able to understand and also through his music he could help them be free too.

In my opinion the narrator, is a very selfish man, he only cares about his feelings and not those around him. The narrator broke his promise to his mother to take care of Sonny, “Two days later I was married, and then I was gone. And I had a lot of things on my mind and I pretty well forgot my promise to Mama until I got shipped home on a special furlough for her funeral” (Baldwin). The narrator’s mother wanted the boys to be close, because they will only

As well as in the short story Sonny’s Blues, the main character, Sonny, is being criticized by his brother. Since the very beginning, their mother told the oldest one, ‘’ you got to hold on to your brother ’’ and that’s what he wanted to do, but Sonny took a different path than he did. Sonny was the kind of guy that was heroin-addicted and a jazz musician, but his older brother didn’t see all these sides of him. We discover all these sides by the use of flashback of the author throughout the major parts of the story. The author didn’t want us to see Sonny like his older brother was seeing him, he wanted us to see him as a poor, un-accepted guy that needed to be listened by his peers. The brother didn’t accept the journey that Sonny had taken, but if he would of saw the actual Sonny, and stop hiding in the darkness, he would of accepted him faster and understand that Sonny only wanted to show that he could do good things not only drugs. In the middle of the story, there is a flashback were we learn that actually Sonny is more experienced about life than his older brother, because Sonny was in drugs and was really affected by Harlem( the city they stayed in when they were younger). The brother had a pretty easy life; he became a teacher and had a little family. This demonstrates that we need support from our peers, to be able to continue without taking bad choices.

The author also describes Sonny’s walk in a musical way, “He has a slow, loping walk, something like the Harlem hipsters walk, only he's imposed on this his own half-beat” (p. 325).

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

In "Sonny's Blues" James Baldwin presents an intergenerational portrait of suffering and survival within the sphere of black community and family. The family dynamic in this story strongly impacts how characters respond to their own pain and that of their family members. Examining the central characters, Mama, the older brother, and Sonny, reveals that each assumes or acknowledges another's burden and pain in order to accept his or her own situation within an oppressive society. Through this sharing each character is able to achieve a more profound understanding of his own suffering and attain a sharper, if more precarious, notion of survival.

In “Sonny’s Blues,” Baldwin shows how the bond of brotherhood can withstand many disheartening choices one can make in life. “Sonny’s Blues” is a story about a brother who has made a life for himself the best he could. The unnamed character in the story describes the heartbreaking experience of witnessing his younger brother, Sonny, fight to stay sober. While the unnamed character grew up, joined the military, and got married; his brother Sonny, took a less travelled path that lead to some trouble. When Sonny was younger, his musical dreams seemed to upset the unnamed character and he felt his brother needed to grow up and make a real life decision about a career. The unnamed character didn’t believe

In James Baldwin's "Sonny's Blues" a pair of brothers try to make sense of the urban decay that surrounds and fills them. This quest to puzzle out the truth of the shadows within their hearts and on the streets takes on a great importance. Baldwin meets his audience at a halfway mark: Sonny has already fallen into drug use, and is now trying to return to a clean life with his brother's aid. The narrator must first attempt to understand and make peace with his brother's drug use before he can extend his help and heart to him. Sonny and his brother both struggle for acceptance. Sonny wants desperately to explain himself while also trying to stay afloat and out

In the story of “Sonny’s Blues,” by Baldwin, the beginning of the story finds Sonny’s brother on his way to work reading about Sonny’s predicament. Sonny got arrested for “peddling and using heroin.” He didn’t want to believe that his brother was in trouble. While teaching his algebra class he was thinking about the past. He remembered when he first suspected his Sonny of using Heroin. He was always under the impression that Sonny was, “wild, but he wasn’t crazy. And he’d always been a good boy.” So he refused to believe that his brother was in trouble and needed him.

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 is one of the famous stories expressing the deplorable conditions the Black community found themselves in during the struggle against racial segregation in the American history. The analysis given by John M. Reilley is to draw the attention of the readers and audience on the image of the black community, basically as expressed by Sonny’s Blues as a metaphor. Following the publication of Sonny’s Blues, James Baldwin realized he had a role in the African American Civil Rights Movement (Baldwin, 69). The story articulates the thoughts and experiences of the racial violence and oppression that was being experienced by the black Americans at the time. Through the story, the writer treats the issues of segregation and racism in a lesser manner as compared to several of his works, but the weight is felt at different levels.

James Baldwin’s “Sonny’s Blues,” tells the tale of a young jazz musician by the name Sonny who gets caught up in the ghetto life and decides to abuse and sell heroin. The story is told by the narrator, a high school math teacher, who happens to be Sonny’s older brother. The two siblings have a somewhat cold relationship that is worsened by the suffering that both brothers have had to endure living in an impoverished area. By presenting events that transpired in the past and relating them to the present, the narrator allows the reader to create his or her own understanding of the two characters through the various themes and literary styles. “Sonny’s Blues” is not merely the story of the narrator’s experiences; it is the tale of his inner transformation and spiritual growth which his earlier experiences of death and loss have motivated.