Sonny's Blues Literary Analysis

In each story, the narrators’ misunderstanding of their family’s needs produces hardships and struggles as their loved ones find their identity alone. In “Sonny’s Blues,” the

When the narrator found out what had happened to sonny, he tried to deny the fact that his brother had gone in a wrong path: “I couldn’t find any room for it anywhere inside me. I kept it outside me for a ling time.” (49). The narrator had not been in contact with Sonny for a long time. He thought Sonny would have his own life and he wouldn’t need help from his older brother. Sometimes people are detached to their siblings because they feel they can’t make a difference in their life, and they don’t want to feel responsible for what their younger siblings

James Baldwin’s “Sonny’s Blues” is a visceral narrative that digs into different themes such as brotherliness, identity, and reclamation. Through Mr. Baldwin's narrative, you can see how the characters handle relationships and experiences and how they contribute to an understanding of their desires and struggles. Sonny and the narrator face a lot of complications due to pain & adversity. By understanding and reading, you'll gain the knowledge of the repercussions of suffering and the pursuit of finding meaning in the world that thrives from human struggle.

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.

Sonny 's blues is a fictional story and a first person narrative written by James Baldwin . The main point of this story is how drugs affects Sonny 's life,and how the narrator feels about it . I believe the moral of this story is people deal with struggles in everyday life and people deal with their struggles in their own way .The narrator is not only sonny’s brother he is also someone trying to undersatnd his brother . Learning more about sonny meant he would be able to understand him and why Sonny chose drugs to escape his pain and struggles.

“Sonny’s Blues” illustrates the ability to stay sane through the power of music. Sonny’s father died when he was fifteen and sadly “He and Sonny hadn’t ever got on too well. And this was partly because Sonny was the apple of his father eye. It was because he love Sonny so much and was frightened for him, that he was always fighting with him” (Baldwin 298). Sonny lost both his parents at a young age, which left him with his older brother as his only family. Sonny’s brother leaves for the army and “…already decided that he’d have to move in with Isabel and her folks” (Baldwin 302). Sonny was not in favor of the arrangement but he really did not have much of a choice. Sonny’s brother cheered him up by saying, “They got a piano at Isabel’s. You can practice on it” (Baldwin 303). Sonny stayed with Isabel and her folks, who tolerated him out of respect for his brother. Sonny’s loneliness caused him to seclude himself from everyone around him. Sonny used music to overcome the loneliness he felt. The music was how Sonny adapted to the new unfamiliar environment. Sonny played the piano every day until supper time. His brother says that “At first, Isabel

In the short story “Sonny’s Blues” the author James Baldwin tells the story of two brothers reconnecting after years of soul searching. The story begins in media res where the narrator finds out his brother has been incarcerated due to a heroin addiction. The rising action begins when the narrator reads about Sonny in the paper. In which he finds out how difficult Sonny’s dug addicted life will be, through one of Sonny’s old friends. In time the narrator finally writes to Sonny after losing his young daughter Gracie, from this point on the two brothers stay in constant communication and reunite after Sonny’s release.

Sonny suddenly becomes in his element. He greets those around him like they are family. The narrator describes it as Sonny’s “kingdom.” This is a new part of Harlem that the narrator has never seen before. It is clear that this is Sonny’s world, and in the nightclub, the narrator is simply Sonny’s brother and nothing else. As Sonny plays, the narrator observes, “He has to fill it, the instrument, with the breath of life, his own. He has to make it do what he wants it to do” (Mays, 113). Before, the narrator had never played an instrument, rarely had he even seen one being played. Music was never an important aspect to his life and for this reason, he felt music was simply a hobby. Now, the narrator is able to see what music is to Sonny. It is life; it is breath. It is what sustains Sonny and allows him to endure the pain of life. The narrator has been carrying the weight of his painful life with him. He has had no control over his parents dying or his little daughter dying, so he tries to maintain control of Sonny’s life. Since he cannot control Sonny, there is always that conflict between the two. As the narrator sits and watches Sonny, he comes to understand Sonny like he never has before. “. . .the face I saw on Sonny I’d never seen before. Everything had been burned out of it, and, at the same time, things usually hidden were being burned in, by the fire and fury of the battle which was occurring in him. . .” (Mays, 113). As a result of Sonny finding freedom in music, the narrator is able to as well. Early on, the narrator had no coping mechanism for the losses that he had in his life. Sonny was able to show him that music is a coping mechanism. While music may not be a mechanism for the narrator, it shows him that he needs one to let go of the past. “The narrator’s freedom comes through his recapturing and acceptance of the past; the music conjures up his mother’s face, his uncle’s death, Grace’s death accompanied by

Music acts as a psychiatric-therapy session to bring peace to those who suffer. The protagonist implies that he cannot endure the awareness that his brother went to jail for drug use, and also for questioning his friend about being intoxicated. Although Sonny is not present in this scene, the music is a sense of interference for the narrator, and further relates to Sonny avoiding his problems of the cold reality in Harlem.

Suffering is something that everyone has to persevere at some point in their life. One thing makes us unique is how we deal with these hardships. The characters in “Sonny’s Blues” endure many difficult situations. How they choose to deal with these situations effects their entire life. To begin the story, we see that the narrator’s brother Sonny has already dealt with his suffering by using heroin. Then the narrator’s daughter dies of polio, but his pain helped him reach out to Sonny. He brought Sonny into his home to live. The story then takes a turn, and it jumps back to before the boys parents died. Their mother tells a story to the narrator about his father. His father’s brother was hit by a car of white men and he died right in front of him. He never was the same after the incident. Then she made him promise to take care of Sonny and not let him fall no matter how hard it is. After the death of their parents Sonny expressed his yearning to be a musician to his brother, and he shot the idea down. Sonny pursued his dreams anyway, but went down the wrong paths. By the end of the story when the brothers are reunited the narrator finally

As said before, there are many conflicts within the story that seem to unfold through out the story. Going deeper into the story, different types of conflict arise and really give you insight on how each character feels. Each conflict there is seems to unfold the plot more and more. There are both internal and external conflicts between Sonny and his brother. Internally,

Sonny's devotion to jazz emphasized the conflict between individualism and conventionalism. Seeing Sonny's passion for music, it’s reasonable to assume that music is a drug for Sonny, and his only way of expressing his hopes and dulling with his pain, after his drug addiction. Sonny's devotion to Jazz was able to change the upstanding mind of his brother by the end of the story. When comparing Sonny to his brother, his brother seems to be afraid. He is unable to accept the disorder and cannot face the pain and uncertainty of the way Sonny lives. Sonny has a different perception of the world, his artistic nature and

As well as in the short story Sonny’s Blues, the main character, Sonny, is being criticized by his brother. Since the very beginning, their mother told the oldest one, ‘’ you got to hold on to your brother ’’ and that’s what he wanted to do, but Sonny took a different path than he did. Sonny was the kind of guy that was heroin-addicted and a jazz musician, but his older brother didn’t see all these sides of him. We discover all these sides by the use of flashback of the author throughout the major parts of the story. The author didn’t want us to see Sonny like his older brother was seeing him, he wanted us to see him as a poor, un-accepted guy that needed to be listened by his peers. The brother didn’t accept the journey that Sonny had taken, but if he would of saw the actual Sonny, and stop hiding in the darkness, he would of accepted him faster and understand that Sonny only wanted to show that he could do good things not only drugs. In the middle of the story, there is a flashback were we learn that actually Sonny is more experienced about life than his older brother, because Sonny was in drugs and was really affected by Harlem( the city they stayed in when they were younger). The brother had a pretty easy life; he became a teacher and had a little family. This demonstrates that we need support from our peers, to be able to continue without taking bad choices.

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.

"Sonny's Blues" opens with news that Sonny has been recently apprehended during a drug bust, which establishes that Sonny has had an ongoing problem with drug addiction, specifically heroin. While the narrator is apprehensive about contacting Sonny after this incident as the brother have lost touch over the years, he eventually reaches out to Sonny and gains insight into what Sonny has been doing during their estrangement; it is also during this time that the narrator recognizes that music is not only an artistic outlet for Sonny, but also provides an emotional and psychological catharsis for him and those that listen to his music. Sonny best describes his dependency on music as he talks to his brother after an old-fashioned revival meeting during which there was much singing. Sonny states,