James Baldwin’s Sonny’s Blues, Essay Example

Introduction

James Baldwin uses Sonny’s Blues to convey the suffering that many blacks were experiencing during the 1950s. Blacks in Harlem faced discrimination, drug addictions, imprisonment, unemployment, and discrimination. The story centers around the lives of two brothers who choose to deal with the hardships they are facing in different ways. Sonny lives a wild and carefree life and uses heroin as a way to escape what life in Harlem. While his brother, searches for success and a better future. He uses his teaching career to as a vehicle to a better life. When the story opens, the narrator is reading about his brother’s, Sonny, arrest for possession and sale of heroin. Baldwin use images of darkness, the setting of 1950s Harlem, and racism to convey the struggle of blacks in oppressed by life.

The Darkness

The darkness represents the dire situation that blacks in Harlem are surrounded with When Sonny and his brother are riding back to Harlem in a cab, the narrator notes that the streets are “darken with dark” people. They discuss how not much has changed in the neighborhood since they were kids. For example, “houses exactly like the houses of our past yet dominated the landscape, boys exactly like the boys we once had been found themselves smothering in these houses, came down into the streets for light and air, and found themselves encircled by disaster” Likewise, when Sonny invites his brother to the club to hear him play, the lights are very dim inside the club and the club is on a dark street. As the musicians are being observed, it is almost as if they are afraid of the light. The narrator notes how they seem to avoid stepping into the circle of light in the center of the stage.  According to Murray, “Images of light and darkness are used by Baldwin to illustrate his theme of man’s painful quest for an identity. Light can represent the harsh glare of reality, the bitter conditions of ghetto existence which harden and brutalize the young” (Murray, 1977). There are several instances when the character retreats from the light back into the darkness. This action represents fear of change due to consistent turmoil and discrimination. Sonny’s brother refers to how his students are consumed with darkness. He believes that the students use movies to escape the darkness they are living in with what they see on the screen, but it only creates another type of darkness. Murray adds, “Another kind of light is that of the movie theater, the light which casts celluloid illusions on the screen. It is this light, shrouded in darkness, which allows the ghetto dwellers’ temporary relief from their condition” (Murray, 1977).

The Setting

To some, Harlem represented freedom that they had never experienced, while to others it was a constant reminder of oppression and frustration. Many scholars believe that Baldwin uses Harlem to represent how many blacks felt while living in Harlem during the 1950s. They were so tired of being repressed and oppressed; they were willing to do anything to escape their surroundings. For example, Sonny used heroin as a way to escape the frustration he was feeling. The setting of Harlem plays a very important role in the theme of the story. The people there are living in poverty and prostitution is a way of life. Baldwin makes the streets of Harlem take on a life of its on through his images. The streets of Harlem evoke sad feelings and memories. For example McParland quotes Balwin:

“…the wages of sin were visible everywhere, in every wine-stained and urine-splashed hallway, in every clanging ambulance bell, in every scar on the faces of the pimps and their whores, in every helpless, newborn baby being brought into this danger, in every knife and pistol fight on the Avenue, and in every disastrous bulletin: a cousin, mother of six, suddenly gone mad, the children parceled out here and there; an indestructible aunt rewarded for years of hard labor by a slow, agonizing death in a terrible small room; someone’s bright son blown into eternity by his own hand; another turned robber and carried off to jail. It was a summer of dreadful speculations and discoveries, of which these were not the worst. Crime became real, for example–for the first time–not as a possibility but as the possibility” (McParland, 2006)

For, Baldwin, this story has some autobiographical content as well.

Racism and Segregation

Racism and segregation are a major theme throughout the story. Although it is never directly stated, it is quite obvious that racism is the root of the suffering and darkness that Baldwin refers to repeatedly in the story. Baldwin discusses the living conditions endured by blacks in housing projects and how those projects are used to separate blacks from the rest of society. Baldwin conveys how the darkness is a curse that is passed on from one generation to the next within the black community. Sadly, many other members of society viewed blacks in this way and held stereotypes of them. For example, “When it comes to race, “Sonny’s Blues” offers more variation than “The White Negro,” but not much. Mailer’s essay imagines only one kind of black man, and Baldwin’s story depicts two: a bourgeois schoolteacher and a junkie bebopper. Bebop’s central figures were black, and many of them were junkies, but race and drugs were peripheral to their legacy” (Yaffe, 2004). This is even obvious with Sonny’s brother, who has been unable to see Sonny as an actual person because of his drug addiction. This belief is deep rooted in him due to the story he has been told by his mother of a musician uncle who had been killed before his was born.

Conclusion

Baldwin use images of darkness, the setting of 1950s Harlem, and racism to convey the struggle of blacks in oppressed by life. Sonny’s Blues is so intricately intertwined that at times the reader is unaware of how clear concepts of black struggle have been made. The character of Sonny could have been any black many in 1950s Harlem. This story has a universal meaning that crosses time constraints and speaks directly to members of minorities that have struggled for their place in American society.

References

McParland, R.P. (2006). To the Deep Water: James Baldwin’s Sonny’s Blues” Interdisciplinary Humanities, 23(2), 131-140.

Murray, D.C (1977). James Baldwin’s Sonny’s Blues’: Complicated and Simple. Studies In Short Fiction, 14(4), 353.

Yaffe, D. (2004). White Negroes and Native Sons: Jazz and Writing America. Chronicle of Higher Education, 50(36), B7-B-10).