Darkness and Light, RL

Darkness and Light

            Sonny’s Blues, the story written by James Baldwin conveys the theme of sorrow experienced by Black Americans as individuals bound by discrimination, desolation, and suffering. It features the struggle of two brothers who lives in a community which is predominantly black, deprived, and bleak.

            The story unfolds as it reveals the narrator’s discoveries, flashback of their childhood, and thoughts on the Harlem community. The narrator, who is an Algebra professor found out about his brother’s horrific situation because of his heroin addiction. Through reading the story, you can see the authors views of darkness that comes with being a Black American. It also emphasizes the impact of drugs and music in their lives, and how they use it as an escape for their sorrows. There are parts in the story which provides evidence that Black Americans suffers from drug addiction, discrimination, poverty, imprisonment and suicide.

            The author conveys his views about addiction in some parts of the story, and these portions are significant to the readers for them to understand the perspective of James Baldwin on addiction in connection with Black Americans, and how he sees drug addiction as something they will never escape from. This is a conversation between the narrator and Sonny’s friend in the first part of the story is an evidence that can support the statement. The narrator says, “Look I haven’t seen Sonny in for over a year, I’m not sure I’m going to do anything. Anyway, what the hell can I do?”. This was Sonny’s friends response, “That’s right,” he said quickly, “Ain’t nothing you can do. Can’t help much old Sonny no more, I guess.” This indicates that the author thinks that a Black American that deals with this kind of problem is helpless. He thinks that addiction is an endless cycle, and it will just start all over again.

            Discrimination is also an evident topic that is considered as one of the problems for Black Americans that the author expressed. When the narrator had a flashback between his conversation with his mother before she died, he discovers that his father had a brother that was killed by white men. “This car was full of white men. They was all drunk, and when they seen your father’s brother they let out a great whoop and a holler and they aimed straight at him.” As you can see, the author didn’t literally talk about discrimination, but with him, specifically using white men as murderers in the story shows that this has a deeper meaning. His mother says at the end of their conversation, “Your Daddy never did really get right again. Till the day he died he weren’t sure but that every white man he saw was the man that killed his brother.” I think his mother’s statement here speaks for the wholesome perspective of Black Americans, that white people are often seen as a threat to them because of racism.

            Poverty, imprisonment, and suicide are also problems that Black Americans are dealing with. When the narrator and Sonny finally met they drove along and the wheels took them to their old neighborhood, and by the way the narrator is describing it, it seems that their neighborhood was in poor condition, he says, “These streets hadn’t changed, though housing projects jutted up out of them now like rocks in the middle of the boiling sea. Most of the houses in which we had grown had vanished… But houses exactly like houses of our past yet dominated landscape… came down into streets for

light and air and found themselves encircled by disaster.” The author James Baldwin, as we know, lives in a community like this, he knows the look of the streets, houses, and buildings from his neighborhood. I think that this part of the story is described by the author by using his own experience. Black Americans community from the view of Baldwin, is a dirty, poor, and even he considers it as a disaster. Followed by all these struggles of Black Americans, they also suffer from imprisonment, due to certain actions like drug addiction, stealing, murder, etc. The results of these struggles and sufferings leads to suicide. As we get back to the first part of the story the friend of Sonny mentioned, “If I was smart, I’d reached for a pistol a long time ago.” The author knows for himself that some Black Americans take suicide as an answer for their struggles.

            Dealing with these sufferings, the Black Americans, in some way cannot be blamed why they use drugs. They use this as part of their coping mechanism. In this research paper, I will argue about how James Baldwin see darkness in the life of the Black Americans, and how he implies that music is the source of their light to give balance in their life.

            James Baldwin, as we know, is a Black American. He knows, and he have even experience the things that he wrote in the story Sonny’s Blue. Written in the earlier paragraphs are the darkness in the lives of Sonny. Baldwin reveals darkness in the story by talking about addiction, discrimination, poverty, imprisonment, and suicide in the Harlem community.

            One of the sources that was helpful in my research is “Sonny’s Blue”: James Baldwin’s Image of Black Community written by John M. Reilly. He mentioned there that the process leads Baldwin’s reader to a sympathetic engagement with young man by providing a knowledge of the human motives of the youths whose lives normally are reported to others only by their inclusion in statistics of school dropout rates, drug usage, and unemployment. I agree with John when he stated this, James Baldwin reveals the dark side in the life of Sonny to get sympathy. He wanted the readers to see the imagery darkness in his story because he, himself, view the lives of a Black American as dark. Throughout the story, he used the imagery of darkness to signal the dangers and traumas of growing up black in Harlem. This begins in the first paragraph, when the narrator is reading the news of Sonny’s arrest his face was describe as, “trapped in the darkness which roared outside.” With the next paragraphs, Baldwin uses darkness as an important word that come at times of terror, misery, and hopelessness. Significant instances of Baldwin focusing on darkness include the narrator’s realization about his algebra students. The narrator said, “All they really knew were two darknesses, the darkness of their lives, which was now closing in on them, and the darkness of the movies, which had blinded them to that other darkness…”. There are different portions in the story that the author uses darkness; the darkness of the night in which the narrator’s uncle was killed by white men, and the darkness that surrounds the living room in the narrator’s memory of being a child in a room of adult conversation. In all the instances mentioned, darkness always is a menace. James Baldwin also used

drug addiction to make his views on darkness firmer. Baldwin presented drug addiction in the story as horrible, destructive, and gut-wrenching. In an article of Timothy Joseph Golden, he said, “The moral problem that is at work in Baldwin's short story Sonny's Blues is “epistemic addiction.” I use the term addiction to emphasize that addiction is one of the motif in the story.” We all know that addiction is considered a moral problem, it is a sin, a sin is evil, and associated with evil is darkness.

            The opposition of light and dark is, of course. James Baldwin also uses light to signify the opposite of darkness. In moments of hopefulness, Baldwin will describe light on people’s faces, and at the jazz club when the narrator watch his brother Sonny plays, he observes that music is “the only light we’ve got in all this darkness.” This statement proves that music is a vital part in the story because it is the only thing that a creates balance in the story Sonny’s Blues. In the journal article James Baldwin’s “Sonny’s Blue” A Message in Music written by Suzy B. Goldman, she mentions “Sonny, makes himself heard and transcends the disenchantment, darkness, with song.” At his early age, Sonny decides he wants to grow up to become a musician because for him, music is his guiding light. Instances in the story proves that music serves as his strength in times of difficulties. “Sonny was so serious about his music and how, as soon as he came from school, or wherever he had been when he was supposed to be at school, he went straight to that piano and stayed there until suppertime.” This was part of the letter Isabel, who is the wife of the narrator, sent to him when he asked about Sonny. Despite of all the darkness Sonny’s life brings, he gains light when he is playing his piano, and he is more

relaxed when he is in tuned with his music. In fact, the narrator describes music as life or death for Sonny. Music is the only thing that keeps him from shaking to pieces.

            James Baldwin’s story, Sonny’s Blues, involves a constant contrast between light and dark. Baldwin uses this them to highlight the struggles that Sonny faces. Light signifies music in his life. Meanwhile, the darkness symbolizes the constant struggle that threatens the characters in the story. Light and dark has an existence in the story to keep the balance.

            There is a quote that Sonny said, “No, there is no way to suffer. But you to try all kinds of ways to keep from drowning in it, to keep on top of it, and to make it seem—well, like you. Like you did something, all right, and now you’re suffering for it. You know?” What he says here sums up the authors point, Sonny, who represents the life of the Black Americans, turns addiction, suicide, or music as their coping mechanism for them not to drown, for them to survive, and for them to create light despite of darkness.