Suffering In Sonny's Blues By James Baldwin

“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.

The setting of this story takes place in Harlem in the 1960’s. Though in 1954 when the Brown vs. Broad case found that racially segregates schools were not equal at all, there was still the transition where blacks were still being treated unequally. Harlem was not the ideal living area, but for Sonny and his family it was what they could afford. This may have to do with why Sonny got into drugs. He was in a primarily black community where there wasn’t much opportunity for them to do the things they wanted. It may have been the people Sonny would hang out with, the thought that he wasn’t going anywhere in life, or the thought that his family needed more money, that made him ultimately resort to selling drugs.

That's when he started writing to his brother. "My trouble made his real," he said (62). Because the truth is, we are never truly safe from anything. No one and nothing can protect us. This idea is brought out numerous times in the story. Driving past housing projects, where people have attempted to make nice, safe homes for themselves and their children in the midst of Harlem, and noticing the beat-looking grass and the big windows, and the playground, which saw more activity after dark, Sonny's brother notes: "The hedges will never hold out the streets, and they know it" (53). Sonny's brother is taking on the attitude he remembers hearing from their father. " 'Safe!' my father grunted, whenever Mama suggested trying to move to a neighbourhood which might be safer for children. 'Safe, hell! Ain't no place safe for kids, nor nobody!'" (54).

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

The narrator experienced a lot of problems throughout his life but managed to emerge victoriously from most of them. Even with this, he needs to support Sonny because this was his mother's dying wish. "The death of the narrator's daughter, Sonny's failure to fit in with his own family, a stint in the navy all serve to alienate the brothers, even after their mother made the narrator promise to keep an eye on young Sonny" (Smith 22). The fact that they were born in a harsh environment, society's views in regard to their racial background, and the fact that they experienced a lot of hardships during their lives all had a severe effect on the personalities of each of the brothers.

At first he turns to music to fix his problems, and then heroin. Sonny left school, and joined the navy to get as far away from Harlem as he possibly could. When Sonny returns from prison, he tried explaining to his brother what music does for him, “"It's not so much to play. It's to stand it, to be able to make it at all. On any level"(Baldwin). He frowned and smiled: "In order to keep from shaking to pieces."” He didn’t want to be a prisoner of Harlem anymore, but became a prisoner to heroin. At first Sonny did not feel that heroin was necessarily a bad thing, “"It makes you feel-in control. Sometimes you've got to have that feeling" (Baldwin). Sonny feels that even while all doped up on heroin, he feels in control of his life and his circumstances. Even though Sonny takes on different approaches in finding sense in his life; whether through the army, music, or heroin, they do not realistically solve any of his problems they just mask his confusion and indecision temporarily.

Yet both these very different brothers are united in experience something inevitable as human beings: suffering. Sonny seems to dive deeper into his suffering, tapping into it as a form of expression. Older brother walls himself off from his pain, turning negative and bitter about many aspects of his existence. In the end, Sonny's open expression of his suffering creates a bridge between the two brothers.

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.

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 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.

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

Initially, he had refused to acknowledge his pain and suffering instead, he choose to ignore them. His suffering was immense and this is evident when he says "A great block of ice got settled in my belly and kept melting there slowly all day long, while I taught my classes algebra. It was a special kind of ice. . . . Sometimes it hardened and seemed to expand until I felt my guts were going to come spilling out or that I was going to choke or scream" (Baldwin 12). After listening to his performance, he was able to uinderstand the power of music and its importance to Sonny in dealing with his addcition problem. From that time, he became more understanding of Sonny and he was able to learn to strugle and endure his pain and suffering. Initially, he never undersatood what pain and suffering was and how it can be overcome. He finally realized that, suffering can be transformed into a communal art like music and from there it dissappears completely. Through Sonny’s music, the narrator was able to understand his life and pain and accepts himself. In addition, their connectiuon in music becomes a catalyst and genuine epiphany for the

Some people might agree that a broken home might be better then no home, or maybe having no home is better then having a hopeless home. The narrator who is unnamed in Baldwin’s “Sonny’s Blues”, is from a home that you can carry good and horrid memories with you. In the short story “Sonny’s Blues”, the narrator along with his entire household all have personal suffering that affect their lives tremendously. Consider that almost everyone has problems in their life and household, weather you are rich or poor. Although we all want the best for our selves, many people attempt to escape depression and suffering in a couple of different ways. In today’s world, African-Americans are still judged based on their skin color. Sure, there is hope to over come pre judgement, it is clear not all black people steal and do drugs to escape suffering. “Sonny 's Blues" describes a particular time in American society, for a black family that struggles to live in Harlem during the 1950’s. Being minorities and living in a ghetto area, they suffer from limited possibilities. "Sonny 's Blues” defines racial issues, suffering from alcoholism and addicting drugs, and responsibility. This is very important, because racism and drugs should not be a way to run from emotional feelings. All in result of living in Harlem, drug dealing happens in the playgrounds near the housing projects, every character is

He stood away from all the bad influence and unlike other men of his age in Harlem, he has a profession. He also remains with the flat attitude in the first part of the story, expressing dull emotions while talking about Sonny’s situations. The audience expects him to be affected immediately but the first part of the story shows otherwise. Then, his character eventually evolves emotionally when he finally writes to Sonny. Sonny’s brother thinks “And I didn’t write to Sonny or send him anything for a long time. When I finally did it, it was just after my little girl died, and he wrote me back a letter which made me feel like a bastard.”(538) After Sonny writes him back, the narrator’s character was even more developed as he finally shows interest in the life his brother is living. He wonders how this life Sonny lives had affected him. Baldwin wrote “Then I kept in constant touch with him and I sent him whatever I could and I went to meet him when he came back to New York. When I saw him many things I thought I had forgotten came flooding back to me. This was because I had begun, finally, to wonder about Sonny, about the life that Sonny lived inside.” (538). the audience, on the other hand, was also given access to Sonny’s perspective on why his addiction persisted for a while. At first, he was negatively described and compared to other young boys in Harlem by

After the narrator informs Sonny of his daughter’s death, Sonny writes back from jail in a letter expressing how he does not know how he ended up locked in jail and how glad he is that his parents “are dead and can’t see what’s happened to their son” (Baldwin 555). Sonny already has guilt about disappointing his brother and does not want to add his parents to his list of burdens. In general, drugs and alcohol is a recurring theme in not only Parker’s life but Sonny’s life in “Sonny’s Blues” as well.