The Multiple Contexts of Human Existence in Sonny’s Blues, Book Review Example

James Baldwin’s Sonny’s Blues is a tale of urban life, one that is marked by tragedy. The narrator’s brother Sonny is a heroin addict, whereas the narrator himself is a school teacher. These two biographies show the different turns life can take: one marked by suffering, the other by optimism and contribution. At the same time, however, Baldwin does not present such a black and white story: Sonny is at once a gifted jazz musician, who is adored by his peers and the public for his talents, despite his drug addiction. Accordingly, Baldwin appears to give a complex picture of our everyday existences, with no easy answers: when can lives be called meaningful, and when can they be called tragic? Can there be meaning in tragedy? It appears that for Baldwin the answer given in this story is precisely not to answer it. He wishes instead to provide a contextual picture of human existence that calls into questions the fine line between happiness and despair: the view point from which one looks at a life determines much of how this life is judged.

At the very beginning of the story, the reader is introduced to Sonny’s heroin addiction. This is contrasted with Sonny’s character, which therefore establishes this complex existential picture of the human in the story. Baldwin writes: “when he was about as old as the boys in my classes his face had been bright and open, there was a lot of copper in it; and he’d had wonderfully direct brown eyes, and great gentleness and privacy. I wondered what he looked like now.” What prompts this meditation by the narrator is Sonny’s arrest by the police: the narrator is reflecting on changes in human existence, which shows that there is no straightforward and easily understandable account of existential choices that we make. The narrator here makes a clear distinction between the past and the future and the fact that they can contradict each other.

Yet Baldwin does not want to give merely a picture of the collapse of an individual life. This is contrasted with Baldwin’s description of Sonny’s presence in a jazz club. As opposed to being, as the narrator thinks, only a destroyed heroin addict, Sonny in this context is transformed. Baldwin describes the club as follows: “Here, I was in Sonny’s world. Or, rather, his kingdom. Here, it was not even a question that his veins bore royal blood.” (22) Sonny is an entirely different individual in this context: he is not merely another junkie, but now a distinct and respect individual, shown in Baldwin’s usage of the metaphor of the king.

Nevertheless, there does appear to be a deep sadness to Sonny. For example, while playing the narrator observes that “Sonny moved, deep within exactly like someone in torment.” (23) Here, Sonny appears to be clearly suffering, but this is not the result of his drug addiction, but rather because of the relationship of the artist to his or her craft. The narrator writes: “I never before thought of how awful the relationship must be between the musician and his instrument. He has to fill, this instrument, with the breath of life, his own.” (23) The context radically shifts: Sonny moves from a tormented junkie to an artist struggling to create. Baldwin uses the word “torment” to describe this same artistic process; at the same time, Sonny is not dominated by his addiction, but rather by his artistry. This once again provides another context to his life.

It would be straightforward to interpret Baldwin’s narrative as the story of addiction and decline. However, this overlooks the fact that Sonny is a gifted artist. The way Baldwin instead portrays the story is that existences are not reducible to a single element. They can be complex and varied, incorporating both tragedy, despair, lost potential and hope. The struggle is not to avoid being limited to a destructive and singular way of being.

Works Cited

James Baldwin. “Sonny’s Blues.”