The Two Brothers In Sonny's Blues By James Baldwin

James Baldwin’s, “Sonny’s Blues,” illustrates the story between two different brothers as they struggle to discover the character of one another. “Sonny’s Blues” is narrated through the older brother’s point of view, as he portrays their difficulties in growing up, separation, and reunion. Baldwin purposely picks to tell the story in the first person point of view because of the omniscient and realistic effects it contribute to the story overall. The mother, father, and Sonny all express their accounts to the older brother, making him the perfect character to tell the story. In addition, the first person point of view allows the reader to experience the vicarious feelings that the

The beginning of "Sonny's Blues" marks an awakening for the narrator. He is faced with Sonny's drug addiction problem. His own grief for the loss of his daughter focuses a new perception. "My trouble made his real" (245). Now the narrator tries to truly understand his younger brother and what he wants out of his life. The narrator must finally come to know his baby brother in order to understand the menace that he had almost died trying to escape. He realizes that he must come to terms with a failure, "the fact that had held silence- so long!- when (Sonny) had needed human speech to help him," in order to find a new relationship with his brother (248). The narrator realizes the truth in his mother's advice to him before she died. "You got to let him know you's there," and in doing so Sonny's brother allow his silence to be challenged by Sonny's account of his suffering and by the music that is Sonny's lifeline (240).

The struggles that the narrator faces is what to do to help his brother and keep to the promise he made to his mother. Being the older of the two brothers the narrator had to take Sonny under his wing. However, the age difference between them made it very difficult. The narrator tried to reach out to his brother after their mother had passed. For he felt as if he failed to keep his promise he made to his mother, that as the older brother he would always take care of Sonny...trouble is, he don’t know how to help Sonny. “I’d [He’d] never played a role of the older brother quite so seriously before, had scarcely ever, in fact, asked Sonny a damn thing. I [He] sensed myself [himself] in the presents of something I [he] didn’t’ really know how to handle, didn’t understand” (Baldwin 183). When the narrator found that opportunity to reach out to his brother after the funeral. The narrator tries to inquire about Sonny’s future plan. Sonny had told him about his dream of becoming a jazz pianist. The narrator disagrees with the choice that Sonny had made about his future. However, attempting to repair his relationship, the narrator invited Sonny to live with him and is wife. In order to keep an eye and fulfill the promise he made to his mother. During that period, the narrator had suspected that Sonny was experimenting with drugs, but he tried to ignore his suspicions. He told himself that "Sonny was wild, but he wasn't

The loss of their father at a young age really started to slowly separate Sonny and his brother from the family. Sonny ended up taking the wrong path, while his brother

The relationship between siblings can be very strained. Maybe the siblings fight all of the time, or they just don’t care what the other(s) do. In James Baldwin’s “Sonny’s Blues,” the relationship between Sonny and his brother was very distant for a few months after Sonny was arrested, but they became closer once he was released. The brothers do care about each other very dearly and want the best for each other. Baldwin’s short story shows a sibling relationship in which the narrator wants to be there to protect Sonny.° The narrator shows this quality when he sees his mother for the last time, after his mother’s funeral, and after Sonny’s struggle with addiction.*

Furthermore, Sonny's individualism is a direct result of his unhappiness with conventional life. As a young man, Sonny is unable to get along with his father. He hates his home and school. His creative interest leads him to become isolated from his brother, who feels threatened by "his jazz-oriented life style and his continued attraction to Greenwich Village" (Albert 179). By the beginning of the story, Sonny has rejected his family and his home, constructing a new life as a musician and drug peddler in a new location foreign to the narrator.

James Baldwin’s Sonny’ Blues is a look behind the curtain, revealing the honest life that African Americans endeavor and the obstacles their community faced in Harlem during the 1950s. Baldwin writes Sonny’s Blues from the perspective of a man who had grown up in Harlem, who had encountered obstacles such as poverty, grief, addiction, and limited opportunities all of his young life. Poverty, grief, addiction and the limited opportunities, these patterns of suffering had dominated the Harlem community. Allegedly the narrator has escaped the cycle of suffering within his community, illustrating the family he had built and his stable job while his brother as chosen to pursue his dreams and become a musician. It appears his brother Sonny, had fallen

Combining a love for music with a personal history of living through racism, segregation, poverty, and drugs; James Baldwin pens “Sonny’s Blues”. In this story the reader learns about the burdens of characters living in a post-World War II Harlem. Accordingly, the narrative is told from the perspective of a man dealing with the struggles of his younger brother, Sonny, a blues-loving composer with a dark history. As Sonny grows up in a racially charged borough of New York City he learns how to play the piano and to use that gift to channel his loss and suffering into music; while the narrator grows up trying to live up to the responsibilities of raising a younger sibling with deceased parents. Subsequently, through his use of symbolism,

James Baldwin tells the story of the relationship between Sonny and his brother, in the narrator’s point of view, to establish the idea that regardless of the pressure a community places on a household, there will always be a responsibility for family to care for one another.

“Sonny’s Blues” is a short story about two brother’s relationship. The setting of the story is in Harlem, New York after World War II (Shaup). The story starts out with the narrator looking through the paper when he realizes his brother Sonny was in jail for heroin bust. The narrator does not speak to Sonny until his daughter dies. Sonny is released from jail to live with his brother and sister-in-law where he finds his love and passion for music. The narrator left for the Army Sonny realized his love for music has been a burden on the family and joined the Navy. Sonny returned home him and the narrator had a disagreement on how Sonny was living his life and the decisions he had made, and the disagreement ended when Sonny and the narrator go to a jazz club and the narrator sees who Sonny really is and his potential. There are at least three literary devices the author uses to make

Both of the brothers grew up in Harlem, a place full of poverty and sadness. Even though the narrator who is Sonny's brother teaches school in Harlem, he rather be apart from those that lives there and are struggling and living life by the tip of the strand. He is also somewhat bossy and judgemental. He loves his brother but is too far distant from

The narrator feels the pain of his own past while listening. He comes to understand not only the beauty of jazz, but also the inner

His daughter, Grace, passes away unexpectedly from polio, so he decided that enough was enough and to write Sonny. This was the beginning of many letters back and forth while Sonny is still in jail. Upon his release he goes to live with the narrator and his now smaller family. It is on the first dinner where the brothers and family are together that we flashback to many events of the narrators past that help give valuable background information as to why they live the very different lives that they do. In this flashback we learn that Sonny and his father never got along because of how alike they were.

They exchange some brief, stunted conversation before hailing a cab. Sonny asks if the cab can drive alongside the park so he can see the city again. As they head towards Harlem, the “vivid killing streets of [their] childhood” (112), Sonny and the narrator become lost in contemplation, thinking of the parts of themselves they have left behind. ( Tackach, James “ The Biblical Foundation of James Baldwin’s “ Sonny’s Blues… Renascence, vol 59, no 2, Winter 2007,pp 109-118 EBSCOhost)”

The narrator remembered his mother’s reminder, “I ain’t telling you all this to make you scared or bitter or to make you hate nobody.” (Baldwin 10). The race issue made him maturer in his young adulthood. On the other hand, after losing his beloved little daughter, the narrator decided to fulfill his extra responsibility to help Sonny. He started to listen to Sonny sincerely, although he was still unable to calm himself while they discussed about the suffering and the future. In a way, with the opportunity provided by the theme of suffering, Sonny’s brother was also getting mature