Storytelling and Style, Research Paper Example

Comparing the Narrator and Lieutenant Cross in “Sonny’s Blues” and “The Things They Carried”

The narrator of James Baldwin’s “Sonny’s Blues” (1995) and Lieutenant Jimmy Cross in Tim O’Brien’s “The Things They Carried” (1990) are men driven by duty.  Cross’s professional obligations to the men under his command and the narrator’s personal obligations to his younger brother Sonny are one of the primary means by which these characters define themselves. Their need to protect other people from danger gives them purpose while also allowing them to subvert their own emotional needs, demonstrating the high price that duty can exact on an individual.

Lieutenant Jimmy Cross is a man torn between his personal desires and his professional obligations.  His love for Martha, who symbolizes both his unfulfilled dreams and his desire for home, allows him to escape, for a time, the physical and mental hardships of war.  The manner in which he keeps his emotions in check is demonstrated by his recollections of his single date with Martha when he had resisted the urge to carry “her up the stairs to her room” (O’Brien, 1990, pg. 4). Cross’ experiences in Vietnam have taught him about regret, and he now finds himself thinking “of new things he should’ve done” (O’Brien, 1990, pg. 4).  The fantasy represented by Martha allows him to temporarily avoid the awareness that he is responsible for the men under his command. He shirks his duties by slipping “away into daydreams, just pretending, walking barefoot along the Jersey shore, with Martha, carrying nothing” (O’Brien, 1990, pg. 8).  Cross’ duty as a lieutenant reasserts itself, however, after Lavender dies, in part, because of Cross’ inattention.  Realizing that “he had loved Martha more than his men, and as a consequence Lavender was now dead” (O’Brien, 1990, pg. 16), Cross burns the sentimental tokens of his unrequited love and makes plans to do a better job of taking care of his men.  The incident with Lavender demonstrated to Cross that love is a burden of its own, and that “his obligation was not to be loved but to lead” (O’Brien, 1990, pg. 25).

The narrator of “Sonny’s Blues” (1994) is similarly burdened by love and duty. The trials that he has experienced as the elder brother of a drug addict have left him emotionally exhausted, as demonstrated by his reaction to learning about Sonny’s arrest when he states that “I couldn’t find any room for it anywhere inside me” (Baldwin, 1994, 101).  As a teacher, husband, and father, the narrator holds many important responsibilities, and yet he is reluctant to express his emotions about the most devastating events in his life.  This is seen when he mentions the death of his daughter Grace only in passing. When he returns to the subject of his dead daughter later in the story, he provides the reader with more details but filters the anguish of the event through his wife’s experiences.  However, it is obviously a pivotal and defining event because it allowed him to reconnect with his brother, having recognized that “my trouble made his [Sonny’s] real” (Baldwin, 1994, pg. 121).  The complicated relationship between the brothers illustrates the hold that familial obligation has on the narrator, who cannot forget that his last promise to his mother was, “I won’t let nothing happen to Sonny” (Baldwin, 1995, pg. 114). Although “Sonny’s Blues” offers no true emotional resolution for the narrator, his actions toward his brother demonstrate that his duty to his brother is a binding tie that cannot be unbound.

“The Things We Left Behind” (1990) and “Sonny’s Blues” (1994) highlight the manner in which Collins and the narrator are defined by their sense of duty towards others.  Neither man is fully able to express his emotions:  Lieutenant Cross’ experiences in Vietnam teach him that duty must take precedence over his own feelings and the narrator’s attempts to rescue Sonny from his own choices only serve to show the pointlessness of such actions.  However, both characters take some comfort in the knowledge that they have fulfilled their duties to the best of their abilities, thereby accepting that their own emotional needs must be secondary to the needs of others.

References

Baldwin, J. (1995). Sonny’s blues. In Going to Meet the Man: Stories. New York, NY: Vintage.

O’Brien, T. (1990). The things they carried. In The Things They Carried. New York, NY: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.