The Presence of Darkness in James Baldwin's Sonny's Blues Essays

Everyone likes to feel safe. We try to protect ourselves and those we love, to make them feel safe as well. The idea conveyed about safety in James Baldwin's "Sonny's Blues" is that there is no such thing.

The idea of light and dark plays a significant role in the black society of the 1950s that the narrator and Sonny grew up in. The narrator once speaks of a time when many family members and friends would get together to chat and eat Sunday dinner at his parent's home after church service. He alludes to the darkness once again by saying that moments would occur when the stark silence of the adults brought on by a serious conversation or a dismal revelation, perhaps about a death in the community or some other dark happening that penetrated the light that they had just before talked and laughed so freely in, threatened to prematurely alert the children of what the world around them was really like (98). At this point, the children are completely oblivious to the racism and other immoralities that thrive in the world they will soon have to venture into, but they are able to sense that something very distasteful is imminent, hence the child wishing that "the hand which strokes his forehead will never stop - will never die" (98). This idea of being an innocent child during a very tempestuous time was more than many young men could cling on to. The narrator was able to escape from the lifestyle

She takes advantage of her passion for the darkness as a way of persuading her side of the argument, placing greater favor upon the peacefulness in darkness versus chaos in the light. Also her description of her emotions when she is surrounded by darkness suggests that our busy lives in the light have taken relaxation away from our lives; darkness helps us fall back into simpler times and serenity.

In this story the two brothers love each other, but they don't understand each other and they don't tolerate each other's lives because they love each other so much that they have the power to really hurt one another, but they also show how strong the connections are that bind them, because in the end they find their way back to each other and repeat how much they need each other.

“Sonny’s Blues” is a narration about two siblings – brothers - who choose very different routes in life in order to accomplish the zenith of individualism, expressionism and recognition. In doing so, they take a glimpse into one another’s spheres and learn to assent and appreciate each other for who they are. In 1951, Baldwin wrote Sonny’s Blues, a story of the ills that Harlem provided its youth. In Baldwin’s telling of the narration, it forms a nous of liberation, an atmosphere of therapeutic acceptance for the author, in which Baldwin develops to express his own state through his virtuoso of storytelling. To put it inanely, Baldwin has such a fine grasp of the linguistic and such great urge to interpret that he can move even his stoutest detractors to emotion and response.

Lightness and darkness is a common theme throughout literature, most writers use it through symbols in their writing. In Poe’s story “Masque of the Red Death” and Hawthorne’s story “Minister’s Black Veil” both portray themes of lightness and darkness using symbolism throughout.

The pain that Sonny undergoes is only satisfied when he is playing his music, and it is through this that the narrator accepts Sonny as a person and as a musician. Acceptance of Sonny's profession is extremely difficult for the narrator because he has always associated Sonny's music with darkness and drugs. Nevertheless, the darkness of the night in the jazz club illustrates the complication and wonder of jazz to the narrator. In the jazz club, there is a struggle with light and darkness. This is exemplified when Sonny and the rest of the musicians wait to go on stage and the narrator notices

While reading “Sonny’s Blues” by James Baldwin theme, symbolism, and motifs were discovered throughout the entire short story. Sonny one of the two main characters, is dealing with a drug addiction and is now following his dreams of becoming a jazz musician. The narrator, whose name was never given, does his best to keep the promise he made his mother years ago, to be his brother’s keeper.

When the narrator and Sonny finally get a chance to speak to each other after many years, they begin to slowly open up to each other the grim reality that they face.

Fictional writing is generally done just to entertain readers. Some authors create stories with a singular point of view, while others introduce more complex plots and storylines. When it comes to author James Baldwin’s short story Sonny’s Blues, there is much depth given to the storyline and the characters. Sonny’s Blues has been analyzed by many different people throughout time because the story has many elements. From Baldwin’s skillful use of metaphors and similes to his incorporation of religious references, this story is insightfully and complexly written. A simple story about a man and his brother leaves readers with an inside look into family, drug addiction, socioeconomic struggles in the Black community, and the language of Jazz

Sonny's brother is mired in silence. He attempts to shield himself from the realities that make up his existence, but

In this instance light seems to be simply the good within a young Sonny. His brother is quickly reminded however that just as Sonny's face was once light there were shadows too. Recalling this younger Sonny forces the narrator to think of the other young boys he teaches. He connects the darkness that Sonny faced with the darkness and reality those other young boys live with, "All they really knew were two darknesses, 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, and in which they now, vindictively, dreamed, at once more together than they were at any other time, and more alone," (410). Here Baldwin gives us our first sense of the pervasive nature of darkness. It is engulfing the boys without their realizing it, darkness is the wasted chances or lack of opportunity at all. The movies show the youths a fairy tale of what could be but will never happen. This darkness of what could have been keeps the young boys from attempting anything. They are together in this sentence of fate but they are also painfully alone, because nothing will ever come of them. The young boys of Harlem live in a dark reality; they do not know light and therefore cannot know hope. The narrator begins to understand that there is no way out of the darkness for them and no escape from the reality of drugs and crime that surrounds them.

Sonny’s passion in life was his love for music. This kept him going through his difficult times, “sometime you know, and it was actually when I was most out of the world, I felt I was in it, that I was with it, really, and I could play or didn’t really have to play.” He invited his brother to watch him play at a nightclub. Through the music Sonny played his life’s obstacles and triumph. His brother finally understood what Sonny went through and will continue to go through.

In the world of Harlem, New York the cruelties of the world become incandescently prominent. James Baldwin’s “Sonny’s Blues” addresses the foreboding power of pain in a world where someone’s coping skills dictate the course of their life. The story depicts a person’s options to ignore pain, create a reason for pain, or accept pain and live within it. Baldwin explains the theme of pervasive pain and parent’s attempt to shield children from it through the characters. Their reaction to pain constructs a motif of pain management.

Light is used in many different ways to explain the characters’ realities throughout the story. One way it is used is to explain the brightness that Sonny had as a child and lost. “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” (61). The narrator is also coming to the reality that the younger brother he knew is no longer the same person because of his addiction. Light explains a pivotal moment in Sonny’s life, in which he realizes he lost part of himself to his addiction. “But now I just feel like a man who’s been trying to climb up out of some deep, real deep and funky hole and just saw the sun up there, outside, I got to get outside” (64). Sonny is also trying to get back some of that light he once had and