Who Is To Blame In Sonny's Blues?

In the short story “Sonny’s Blues” Sonny the little brother of the narrator is a troubled blues musician with a nasty heroin addiction that lands him in jail. In the 50’s and 60’s drug abuse was a consistent problem among jazz musicians (Verity). Although Sonny ended up in jail his outlet was blues, he gave himself up to his music but that did not come at price with his family.

His little brother Sonny is always getting in trouble. He doesn’t go to school, he uses drugs, and he doesn’t do what he is told to do. That is because he does not like life, because the white people are so unfair. After a while and a lot of suffering, Sonny discovers something he is good at. He learns to play the piano, and he is able to do something creative and positive, be successful and have the people’s respect.

“Sonny’s Blues” introduces two brothers who have differing mindsets about how to best cope with suffering. The narrator is Sonny’s responsible, unnamed older brother, who follows a very ordered path, using military service, marriage and teaching math to gain stability and escape the downward pull of Harlem. In contrast, younger brother Sonny lives his life like his music hero plays his jazz: improvising. Sonny experiments with drugs, skips school and eventually drops out, all the while feeding his obsession with piano. Sonny’s older brother sees no legitimacy in Sonny’s art and aspirations to become a musician. He disparagingly deems it “to be merely an excuse for the life he led”. The brothers are unable to set their differences aside, and are only reconnected in a time of immense grief, as the brother’s daughter, Grace, dies.

In the story of “The Rich Brother”, from the author Tobias Wolff, and “Sonny’s Blues” by writer James Baldwin, both stories have brothers that succeed and failed. In “The Rich Brother” Pete is the oldest and Donald the youngest, Pete has his life put together, a family, and while the youngest is trying to find himself his lost. In “Sonny’s Blues” the narrator is the oldest brother and Sonny is the youngest, the unnamed narrator is an English teacher who was in the army and has a family, Sonny is a musician that makes bad decisions. Both brothers have an age gap therefore, they view life in different ways, but they only have each other.

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.

In James Baldwin's "Sonny's Blues" the symbolic motif of light and darkness illustrates the painful nature of reality the two characters face as well as the power gained through it. The darkness represents the actuality of life on the streets of the community of Harlem, where there is little escape from the reality of drugs and crime. The persistent nature of the streets lures adolescents to use drugs as a means of escaping the darkness of their lives. The main character, Sonny, a struggling jazz musician, finds himself addicted to heroin as a way of unleashing the creativity and artistic ability that lies within him. While using music as a way of creating a sort of structure in his life, Sonny attempts to step into the light, a life

In the short story “Sonny’s Blues” by James Baldwin a schoolteacher from the city of Harlem struggles with life and figuring out how to helped his troubled brother. All though named Sonny’s Blues the main character is actually Sonny’s brother who is the narrator and goes through his life and how he reacts to the many problems his younger brother has come into. The brothers grew up in the poverty stricken city of Harlem where the brothers had to avoid drugs and violence constantly. Growing up, Sonny struggled to stay out of trouble and ended up making some bad decisions throughout his life and ends up landing him in jail and addicted to heroin. The un-named brother of Sonny who is the narrator of the story begins to

James Baldwin’s “Sonny’s Blues” is a story of how a distant and conflicting relationship between two brothers is saved by the powerful message within music. In “Sonny’s Blues” the music portrays a very powerful message. The story begins with Sonny being arrested for heroin use. Sonny’s older brother is a school teacher and did not want to believe that the news was true, “I didn’t want to believe that I’d ever see my brother going down, coming to nothing, all that light in his face gone out, in the condition I’d already seen so many others” (Baldwin 293). Sonny used his music and drugs to distance himself from all the negativity in his life.

First off, the two main characters that go through a power struggle are Sonny and his brother whom is unnamed. Sonny is an up and coming Jazz musician and his brother, seven years older, is a high school math teacher. Sonny is different than his brother because Sonny knows what he wants and he wants to give meaning in whatever he does. As Joseph Flibbert states in his article, “When Sonny begins to play the piano, initially with enthusiasm, eventually with consuming passion. He takes no lessons. He plays from the soul. The improvisational

Establishing and maintaining a certain identity mostly depends on the setting. The setting allows us to analyze someone at a deeper level. Considering the time, place and the circumstances around under which they respond allows us to explore them and determine their identity. In the short story “Sonny’s Blues”, James Baldwin conveys the message of how one goes about establishing and maintaining their identity on different levels by using elements of setting. The author uses elements of setting several times to convey the message but some of the prominent uses are the military service, life in Harlem and especially the use of

Stuck in his own mindset of what life should be like, he failed to see where his brother was coming from when questioning his future goals and plans. Sonny appeared to be a very sensitive person when the narrator questioned his views and dreams, he took offense and distant himself every time. After their mother died, Sonny was proposed to stay with Isabel (narrator's wife) family, he shot the idea down initially because he really wanted to break out the "trap" that was Harlem and relocate, "Look brother. I don't want to stay in Harlem no more, I really don't." There was something in his eyes I'd never seen before, some thoughtfulness, some worry all his own." (page 58 p11). This showed he knew the outcome if he stayed and didn't leave soon, even opting to join the armed forces if need be. He and his brother came to an agreement with the staying and finishing of school at Isabel's house with the piano. He tried to create happiness through music, which appears to be his escape to the harsh reality they lived in, every day on the piano trying to find an outlet. Eventually, he would stop going to school, and after an intense argument vanished altogether for years making a name for

The narrator goes to a club to watch Sonny and his band play. He begins to understand how deeply his brother feels and thinks, “I had never before thought of how awful the relationship must be between the musician and his instrument. He has to fill it, this instrument with the breath of life, his own.”(Baldwin 102) The music gives Sonny a chance to release his hopelessness and depression. Even though the narrator believes Sonny could have done more with his life if he had turned to classical music, he understands that Sonny is being true to who he really is. The anonymous brother, however, has not found

James Baldwin’s “Sonny’s Blues,” tells the tale of a young jazz musician by the name Sonny who gets caught up in the ghetto life and decides to abuse and sell heroin. The story is told by the narrator, a high school math teacher, who happens to be Sonny’s older brother. The two siblings have a somewhat cold relationship that is worsened by the suffering that both brothers have had to endure living in an impoverished area. By presenting events that transpired in the past and relating them to the present, the narrator allows the reader to create his or her own understanding of the two characters through the various themes and literary styles. “Sonny’s Blues” is not merely the story of the narrator’s experiences; it is the tale of his inner transformation and spiritual growth which his earlier experiences of death and loss have motivated.

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.