In Response to Sonny’s Blues by James Baldwin
Sonny’s Blues is a story narrated by Sonny’s brother, whose name is never told, which talks about the experience between two brothers who were raised in Harlem. The story shows parallels between the two boys and how different people can be affected by the same life experiences and environments. Sonny ended up a musician who got incarcerated for heroin use, he was alone and had not spoken to his brother in years. His brother was a school teacher, with a wife, a home and a family.
In the time that Sonny and the narrator were growing up Harlem was a place polluted with drugs and crime. In the story James Baldwin, the author, uses the metaphor of darkness to represent this dangerous and destructive environment. In contrast he also includes the motif of light. While the immediate assumption would be that the light represents happiness and the good in life, it actually represents the realization of what life truly is in Harlem.
The story goes on to explain how the streets are plagued with this darkness. Sonny’s brother sees this whenever he looks at his students. He watches them and is reminded of a similar childhood that him and Sonny experienced, these boys, so full of life and blissful ignorance to their situation and disadvantages, never having a chance while they are young to realize that they are stuck. “These boys, now, were living as we'd been living then, they were growing up with a rush and their heads bumped abruptly against the low ceiling of their actual possibilities. They were filled with rage. All they really knew were two darknesses, the darkness of their lives, which was now closing in on them, and darkness of the movies, which had blinded them to that other darkness, and in which they now, vindictively, dreamed, at once more together than they were at any other time, and more alone”(Baldwin). These kids may think they are aware of the dark they live in because in movies and media they see another life for them and they believe they can achieve it, but the reality is that they will only be able to make it so far before they hit their glass ceiling and this enveloping darkness will follow them wherever they go.
Sonny in his lifetime felt this so harshly that he gave into the darkness. He was an aspiring jazz musician and he wanted to be more, he wanted to do more with himself but he went about it in the wrong way. He became addicted to heroin, this was his way of trying to find the light. Trying to find the release in something so he did not have to think about his painful childhood. He did this not realizing that giving into the dark does not make you aware of it it makes you ignorant to the light of realizing so you never truly grow out of childhood.
The story about their life as children is told through flashbacks, even then the motif of dark and light is still present. In one of the narrators flashbacks he states, "The silence, the darkness coming, and the darkness in the faces frighten the child obscurely. He hopes that the hand which strokes his forehead will never stop--will never die. But something deep and watchful in the child knows that this is bound to end, is already ending. And when the light fills the room, the child is filled with darkness."(Baldwin). The children, while they are too young to fully understand the capacity of this dense darkness, are still somehow aware of the life that they will have to experience and live through. Here the motif of light being realization is shown. Once the child realizes that this darkness will always be in his or her shadow they are blinded by all the truth that is taken in with that knowledge and the child becomes the darkness because they represent everything that can happen to a child in Harlem, how the pain which they endured then will always seem to follow them no matter where they go.
Sonny is an example of one of these darkness filled children. He is filled with the pain of his past and his whole life he has just been trying to numb himself to his life and find a way to let his music out. It is not until Sonny goes and stays with his brother that he begins to get clean. Sonny and his brother do not talk much about what Sonny went through or why he did was he did until the end of the story. Whence him and his brother have a conversation which finally makes his brother realize why he was living the way he was living.
After this conversation, Sonny invites his brother to go see him play. It was not until then that the brother finally began to see Sonny’s music as more than just drugs and darkness. Sonny was gifted and his music was important to him. His music was how he escaped the darkness, not what caused it and as his brother watched him he finally went into the light about his brother and realized that no matter what he did or what happened, there would always be some darkness in both their lives. The realization is exemplified by the cup of scotch and milk which held both light and dark living in harmony. While the narrator was watching his brother play the piano, he asked the waitress to take Sonny a Scotch and milk, this was his way of letting his brother know that he understood now why he did what he did and that had respect for him. “Awhile I saw the girl put a Scotch and milk on top of the piano for Sonny. He didn't seem to notice it, but just before they started playing again, he sipped from it and looked toward me, and nodded. Then he put it back on top of the piano. For me, then, as they began to play again, it glowed and shook above my brother's head like the very cup of trembling.”
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