In every individual, a host of socio-historical forces converge and influence the subject’s ideas. Consciously and unconsciously, the individual reflects the confluence of his or her history and culture. In “Sonny’s Blues”, a short story by James Baldwin, the dominant culture constricts the black individual. Subject to the explicit and latent biases of a racist society, the black population of “Sonny’s Blues” attempt to endure oppression and suffering and survive in an unforgiving land. However, they can thrive here with the hope and salvation provided by the communal center of African American culture: religion. Written after the abolition of slavery, but before the Civil Rights Movement, “Sonny’s Blues” transpires in an uncertain era, …show more content…
Aware of the societal policies and practices discriminating against them, the African Americans in “Sonny’s Blues” perceive this societal oppression as a “darkness” surrounding them. The darkness in “Sonny’s Blues” is the metaphorical embodiment of their suffering and the eventual culmination of that suffering: death. The narrator remembers the darkness in his youth, when he saw “the darkness coming, and the darkness in the faces” (11), which frightened him. The narrator was afraid of his destiny, afraid of the brutal reality awaiting him, afraid of the finality of death. He hoped that “the hand which stroke[d] his forehead [would] never stop — [would] never die… that there [would] never come a time when the old folks [wouldn’t] be around…” (11). This darkness, the darkness of racism and the darkness of death, affects all the black populace of “Sonny’s Blues.” In response to this darkness, each black character copes in his or her unique way. The narrator leaves the crime-ridden projects of his youth to a better home, where he attempts, under societal oppression, a stable life. Sonny attempts to escape the darkness by playing music and eventually, doing heroin. The narrator, in enduring his pains, finds relative stability in family and work; believing
Establishing and maintaining a certain identity mostly depends on the setting. The setting allows us to analyze someone at a deeper level. Considering the time, place and the circumstances around under which they respond allows us to explore them and determine their identity. In the short story “Sonny’s Blues”, James Baldwin conveys the message of how one goes about establishing and maintaining their identity on different levels by using elements of setting. The author uses elements of setting several times to convey the message but some of the prominent uses are the military service, life in Harlem and especially the use of
“Sonny’s Blues” is an emotional story written by an amazing author, James Baldwin, who has come to be one of my favorite writers. This particular piece talks about the troubles of African American freeing themselves from the mental bondages of their surroundings, the ghetto. The title is significant, and helped me to understand the underlining meaning of the story. The title can be divided into two main reasons, the first, “Sonny’s Blues, meaning the music he plays. Second is the reference to his life, his feelings, his style, and most importantly his way of life.
In James Baldwin’s short story, Sonny’s Blues, he describes a story of pain and prejudice. The theme of suffering makes the readers relate to it. The story is told in the realistic point of view of Sonny’s brother. The setting and time of the story also has great significance to the story. From beginning to end, the story is well developed.
In James Baldwin’s short story, “Sonny’s Blues” there is a constant contrast between light and dark. Baldwin uses this theme to highlight the struggles that the Narrator and his younger brother, Sonny, both face. Light represents all of the positive aspects of life. Meanwhile, the darkness represents the constant struggle that threatens the characters in the story. Light and dark has a presence in both characters. The narrator lives his life in the “light”. He is a teacher, middleclass man, a man who has a wife and family. For the narrator, the darkness is his constant reflections on his brother, and his sense of guilt or blame for being the reason why Sonny turned to a life of drugs. The darkness represents Sonny in a way. He is a
The Souls of Black Folk by W.E.B Dubois is a influential work in African American literature and is an American classic. In this book Dubois proposes that "the problem of the Twentieth Century is the problem of the color-line." His concepts of life behind the veil of race and the resulting "double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one's self through the eyes of others," have become touchstones for thinking about race in America. In addition to these lasting concepts, Souls offers an evaluation of the progress of the races and the possibilities for future progress as the nation entered the twentieth century.
Many tragic events happen in this short story that allows the reader to create an assumption for an underlying theme of racism. John Baldwin has a way of telling the story of Sonny’s drug problem as a tragic reality of the African American experience. The reader has to depict textual evidence to prove how the lifestyle and Harlem has affected almost everything. The narrator describes Harlem as “... some place I didn’t want to go. I certainly didn’t want to know how it felt. It filled everything, the people, the houses, the music, the dark, quicksilver barmaid, with menace; and this menace was their reality” (Baldwin 60). Another key part in this story is when the narrator and Sonny’s mother is telling the story of a deceased uncle. The mother explains how dad’s brother was drunk crossing the road and got hit by a car full of drunk white men. Baldwin specifically puts emphasis on the word “white” to describe the men for a comparison to the culture of dad and his brother.
Sonny’s Blues by James Balwin has a variety of themes. The main theme represented in this short story is suffering. Suffering seemed to be a main part of the narrator and Sonny’s everyday lifestyle. In “Sonny’s Blues,” the narrator compares him and his brother’s rough life to the students in his Algebra class, “These boys, now, were living as we’d been living then, they were growing up with a rush and their heads bumped abruptly against the low ceiling of their actual possibilities.”(5-7) The young men in Harlem believe that they will never have anything good going for them in their lives because of the racist society that we live in. They suffer from the ill effects of the limits that their conditions have obliged them with.
“The War on Drugs” is commonly referred to terminology regarding the government’s efforts to rid society of dangerous narcotics readily available on the streets of America’s cities. In the early twentieth century, America’s urban minority population were struggling with a heroin addiction of epidemic proportions. This brought on stigma against urban minorities by uninvolved demographics across America. James Baldwin, an already influential African American author of the time, saw this prejudice within society and wrote Sonny’s Blues as an insightful work to illuminate the struggle behind the addiction. Sonny’s Blues acts as a satirical examination on the effects of adversity, in specific the stigma placed onto African American’s that have
James Baldwin’s story “Sonny’s Blues” tells the tale of two African-American brothers trying to survive in 1950s America. Both struggle with darkness in their lives, from drugs to bottling up emotions. The following sources were found Literature Research Center’s website. Each of the four sources will be evaluated for the quality of their information, as well as their usefulness on the topic of darkness in “
In James Baldwin 's short story "Sonny 's Blues" a young man questions his brotherly obligations after finding that his younger brother has been arrested for using drugs. In the attempt to rectify his younger brother 's behavior and life, the young man faces his own feelings for his brother and comes to terms with the life his brother Sonny lives. The developments of certain elements-plot, character, point of view, setting, symbolism-in the story help accentuate the narrator 's struggles and theme(s) of the story.
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.
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
Despite the diligent efforts for absolute racial equality that were made nearly 100 years after the Emancipation Proclamation was established, equal opportunity still seemed to be impractical longing. The movements for African American civil rights took place in the mid 1950s; however, change did not occur promptly with the efforts. African Americans continued to suffer and bear hardships throughout the civil rights era. Author James Baldwin’ reveals these adversities in his short story “Sonny’s Blues”. Baldwin wanted to allow insight into the oppression African Americans faced in the 1950s Harlem, New York and essentially the motivation to escape from it.
Although innumerable numbers of African Americans try to overcome their struggles, according to Perceptions of and Preferences for Skin Color, Black Racial Identity, and Self- esteem Among African Americans, while multitudinous dark-complexioned African Americans view their skin color proudly, others are ambivalent and view their blackness as a “mark of oppression” (Kardiner & Ovesey, 1951). This “mark of oppression” has come from the way African-Americans have been treated as a whole and throughout the various poems, we will understand exactly what it means to be an African-American.