A lesson about love, May

“A lesson about love”

Sonny’s Blues is a short story written by James Baldwin who was a leading literary spokesman for civil rights and racial equality in America. Sonny’s Blues is an examination of human relationship with oneself and with others. The two main characters are Sonny and his brother which is the narrator, two black brothers living in Harlem. Their environment is characterized as predominantly black, poor and struggling for hope. The brothers’ incompatible natures threaten their relationship and their different approaches to life have seemingly led them to opposite directions as they strive to find their own identities. James Baldwin’s Sonny’s Blues explores the complexity of brotherhood that is caused in part by the conflicting personalities of two brothers who have very different styles of communication and who view their community in completely opposite ways. The narrator’s personality is one that obeys rules and makes wholesome decisions because he feels that is the morally right thing to do and because he wants to avoid the suffering that he sees on the streets of his community. He also takes responsibility to his wife and children seriously and stays sober so that he can get an education and hold down a reliable job to financially support his family. His younger brother Sonny, on the other hand, has a sensitive personality that causes him to feel the pain and suffering of his community members, and instead of avoiding them he chooses to engage with them and finds beauty in the struggle of life on the streets. Sonny has a hard time using language to explain to his older brother, the narrator, why he feels the way he does and why he makes the decisions that he makes. Rather, Sonny feels more at home communicating through the music that he plays on the piano with his jazz group at the night clubs. Because his older brother, the narrator, doesn’t really play music or understand it, he doesn’t value Sonny’s musical talent and doesn’t see it as a viable way of life. It isn’t until the end of the story when the narrator finally listens to Sonny and tries to understand what Sonny is struggling to explain, that the narrator is able to finally accept and connect with his brother. When he accepts Sonny’s invitation to go to the jazz club and listen to Sonny play his music, the narrator finally sees the beauty of Sonny’s talent and the gift that it is to his people in his community.

In James Baldwin’s Sonny’s Blues, some readers may think that the main focus of the story is Sonny, on the fact that he will likely re-enter his life as a musician and the environment of drugs and alcohol, however, I think that James Baldwin’s principal focus in the story is pointing out the importance of loving and accepting one’s brother unconditionally.

The story begins when the narrator learns of Sonny’s arrest in the newspaper. The narrator could not believe the news he just learned. Goldman stated that, the narrator’s discovery sounds the initial note of the brothers’ growing closeness, I agree with Goldman because upon learning of his brother’s arrest on the newspaper he was forced to confront his refusal to accept the miserable truths around him and started to feel responsible of his brother’s misery.

 “It was not to be believed and I kept telling myself that, as I walked from the subway station to the high school. And at the same time, I couldn’t doubt it.” . . . “It was a special kind of ice. It kept melting, sending trickles of ice all up and down my veins but it never got less.” (pp.74) the narrator couldn’t accept the truth of his brother’s arrest and use of heroin, but yet he can’t deny it. The fear he felt was not for Sonny but for himself, for if he re-establishes connection with his brother, his harmonious middle class life as a school teacher cannot admit a drug addict brother.  The narrator later admitted that he had had suspicions in the past that Sonny had been using heroin but kept it outside of himself for a long time. “I hadn’t wanted to know.”(pp.74). Realizing that his inability to listen to Sonny, the narrator felt vaguely responsible for what happened to his brother. The emotion he felt brought by the news had caused him to know what his students’ feel behind their laughter. As he think of Sonny’s misfortune, the narrator was able to listen to his students “I listened to the boys outside, downstairs, shouting and cursing and laughing. Their laughter struck me for the first time. It was not a joyous laughter which- God knows why- one associates with children.”(pp.75) the narrator sees something deeper in his students which he relates to his brother and to himself. He heard laughter and yet it was not only laughter that he heard. He was able to determine that it was not a laughter out of joy. He later focused his attention to one of the students whistling tunes which particularly suggest Sonny. “One boy whistling a tune, at once very complicated and very simple, it seemed to be pouring out of him as though he were a bird, and it sounded very cool and moving through that harsh, bright air, only just holding its own, through all those sounds.” As the narrator looks at this child he sees Sonny and see what Sonny must have been through in his life, when he wanted to leave Harlem but was not able to. No one was able to see his suffering, neither listened nor understand him. The narrator suddenly realized that Sonny, for all those times he was forced to stay in Harlem had been pouring himself out, all by himself to move through the harsh air that surrounded him in Harlem. Thus, reading the news about Sonny made the narrator accept and see the miserable truths around him and that led to the start of growing their closeness.

It was only after the death of the narrator’s child, Gracie, that narrator decided to write to Sonny. Sonny wrote back telling the narrator his longing for a brother, “You don’t know how much I needed to hear from you.” Goldman, stated that at this point the brothers finally started to communicate I would add that this communication is meaningful and contains their longing for each other. They both shared the affliction they felt, Sonny realizing that he has been in the deep darkness, his needs to climb back up and the narrators sorrow for the death of his child. The brothers’ communication has drawn them closer to each other and they continued to write until they met.

When Sonny and the narrator finally met, all the things that the narrator had tried to forget had come rushing back to him. The narrator mentions in the beginning that the things that are happening carries him to someplace he did not want to go. Elaine Ognibene, claims that “someplace” the narrator is pertaining to is a past which he has rejected and tried to escape by leaving Harlem and accepting the materialistic values of the higher community. I strongly agree with her claim that the narrator escapes his past by being a math teacher and he was careful not to do the things that he felt white people expects black people to do.  Baldwin equated the narrator with Louise Armstrong and Sonny’s refer to Armstrong as an “old time and “down time” is essential support to this claim. Richard Albert, stated that it is true that Armstrong was viewed this way by numerous of young black musicians in the 1940s and 1950s. He added that Armstrong and the narrator became white men nigger. He has tried as best as he could to reject his black self through becoming a respectable math teacher and by separating himself from black culture as much as possible. However, when the brothers were re-united, Sonny had wanted to see the park, the past that the narrator has banished to the edge of his memory. Sonny’s brother considered the place as a trap. “Some escaped the trap and most didn’t. Those that got out always left something of themselves behind, as some animals amputate a leg and leave it in the trap.” The narrator considered himself as one of those who escaped through becoming a school teacher and thinks that Sonny had escaped too because he hadn’t lived in Harlem for a long time. However, as they continue to reminisce their past, the narrator discovered that both of them were looking for that part that they both left. Even in the absence of words the narrator was able to feel his brother’s trouble by looking at him and examining him. Demonstrating the narrator’s developing ability to see Sonny’s inner sorrow proves that the narrator has started to accept and acknowledge the misery that surrounds them.

Later in the story the narrator remembered when his mother died and consecutively the argument that he and Sonny had, the peak of their failure to communicate. Sonny had wanted to leave Harlem and pursue his ambition to be a musician. However, the appalled narrator was totally unresponsive. The narrator feels that it is not right for his brother because it was too close to the white stereotype of the Rhythm ‘n Blues Blackman. He considered Sonny’s ambition as “kids go through “stage. Evidently, the narrator failed to listen to what Sonny had wanted because he was only focused on making Sonny to be respectable in his standards. Sonny as the younger brother had felt helpless and sorrowful for his brother’s failure to understand him. The narrator begged Sonny to stay: “You only got another year… just try to put up with it till I come back. Will you please do that? For me?”…”Sonny, you hear me?” Sonny responded “I hear you. But you never hear anything I say.” Sonny’s knowledge of his brother’s unwillingness to listen had led him to pour his anguish into music with the use of piano. He stayed in Harlem all troubled, scared and lived with people who do not understand neither see his pain. Having no one to guide and share worries with, Sonny had gone deeper in the darkness.

Although I grant that what led Sonny to his misery was his choices, I still maintain that it was not all his fault. He was a young boy living in an environment where drugs is exploited, having both parents gone, dealing with his brother’s inability to listen to him and having to live with the parents of his brother’s wife, Isabel, which Sonny and the narrator knew was not an ideal plan as her parents are inclined to be snobbish and bossy as described by the narrator himself. At the same time, Sonny’s ability to feel the pain that lingers around him made him feel as though he was trapped with no choice but to share the way he felt with the same people who felt the same way as he did and cured it with heroin which ultimately led him to his fall. For these facts, I agree with Goldman that Sonny’s obsession to the piano was because he has no one to communicate with, the piano become his only source of expression. Sonny only had the narrator to lean on, however, his brother views him as a child that still has to be taken care of and when things don’t go exactly the way the narrator wants he gives up.

So when they learned of Sonny’s continuous absence in school and that he had been going to Greenwich Village, with musicians in a white girl’s apartment they had made him feel as though he had been disrespectful and nothing but a burden to them. Sonny couldn’t take all that and perhaps it became real to him that he had cast suffering upon the people he lives. His realization had given him the courage to leave. He joined the army and had sent a postcard to the narrator to initiate a communication with him. But the narrator could not accept what Sonny had done. When his Sonny returned from the army the narrator said “He was a man by then, of course, but I wasn’t willing to see it.” The narrator could not accept that his brother had chosen a different fate from the fate he had wanted his brother to have, even the way Sonny carried himself, and his friends. He described Sonny’s music as merely an excuse for the life Sonny led, also, just a weird and disordered sound. The narrator was still clinging to his middle class standards that he wanted to impose on Sonny. Then they had a fight, a fight that led them to cut their contact. I support Ognibene’s claim that, it is not until the narrator’s personal suffering that he can begin to understand Sonny’s anguish because the narrator had written a letter to Sonny on the very day that his daughter Gracie was buried and the narrator admitted that “His trouble made his real” the narrator started to empathize with Sonny and at last had the desire to listen to what Sonny has to say, “something told me that I should curb my tongue, that Sonny was doing his best to talk, that I should listen.” The author shows that at last, the narrator was able to feel that Sonny had wanted to talk and was doing his best to. The narrator finally sees part of the barrier that he had built between them. However, the narrator was still struggling to accept that people do not handle suffering the way he does. Which Sonny had pointed out by saying “You’re just hang up on the way people try-it’s not your way.” This led them to a meaningful conversation. The narrator was finally able to express his care for his brother and Sonny’s need to be heard. Then Sonny warned his brother that “it can come again.” The narrator replied with nothing but quite acceptance and understanding of his brother. For sometimes, being quite is the best thing to do. Although the narrator may not completely accept that Sonny has a risk of re-entering the use of drugs, he chose accept his brother, to display his love and care for his brother. That no matter what, he would never fail to be Sonny’s brother again. The narrator’s acknowledgment of the meaning of brotherhood leads directly to Sonny’s invitation to listen that night to his own music, Sonny’s Blues.

At the night club, the narrator was able to see Sonny’s struggle in life that he is doing everything he can despite of continuous mistakes to get the right way. The narrator had finally heard that the music Sonny was playing was beautiful. Most importantly, the narrator had learned to love and accept Sonny unconditionally, as a result he finally recognized the freedom that surrounds them  “Freedom that lurked around us and I understood, at last, that he could help us be free if we would listen, that he will never be free until we did.” Baldwin ultimately pointed out that the narrator’s epiphany, his change of heart towards accepting and loving Sonny unconditionally, through learning to listen to him and being present in Sonny’s life had let them grow closer together, saved their brotherhood and lived harmoniously with each other.

Work Cited

Albert, Richard N. “THE JAZZ-BLUE’S MOTIF IN JAMES BALDWIN SONNY’S BLUES”         College Literature: 1984. Vol 11. No. 2, p.178-184

https://www-jstor-org.byuh.idm.oclc.org/stable/25111592?Search=yes&resultItemClick=true&searchText=sonny%27s&searchText=blues&searchUri=%2Faction%2FdoBasicSearch%3FQuery%3Dsonny%2527s%2Bblues%26amp%3Bfc%3Doff%26amp%3Bwc%3Don%26amp%3Bgroup%3Dnone%26amp%3Bacc%3Don&refreqid=search%3Ac5d8c88d4bf80413d9adba34dacbfec9&seq=3#page_scan_tab_contents

Goldman, Suzy B. James Baldwin’s “Sonny’s Blues”:  A message in Music,

Negro American Literature Forum 1974, Volume 8, No. 3, p.231-233

https://www-jstor-org.byuh.idm.oclc.org/stable/3041461?Search=yes&resultItemClick=true&searchText=sonny%27s&searchText=blues&searchUri=%2Faction%2FdoBasicSearch%3Facc%3Don%26amp%3Bgroup%3Dnone%26amp%3Bfc%3Doff%26amp%3Bwc%3Don%26amp%3BQuery%3Dsonny%2527s%2Bblues&refreqid=search%3Accc4526d4756b041286e2c862a36ef20&seq=3#page_scan_tab_contents

Ognibene, Elaine R. “Black Literature Revisited: Sonny’s Blues” The English Journal:                   1967. Vol 60, No. 1, p. 36-37

https://www-jstor-org.byuh.idm.oclc.org/stable/813336?Search=yes&resultItemClick=true&searchText=%22sonny%27s%20blues%22&searchUri=%2Faction%2FdoBasicSearch%3FQuery%3D%2522sonny%2527s%2Bblues%2522%26amp%3Bfilter%3D&refreqid=search%3Ab3c2b4a0808acb23915a19fef19b9787&seq=2#page_scan_tab_contents