Essay about James Baldwin’s Sonny’s Blues - 1028 Words

In the world of Harlem, New York the cruelties of the world become incandescently prominent. James Baldwin’s â€Å"Sonny’s Blues† addresses the foreboding power of pain in a world where someone’s coping skills dictate the course of their life. The story depicts a person’s options to ignore pain, create a reason for pain, or accept pain and live within it. Baldwin explains the theme of pervasive pain and parent’s attempt to shield children from it through the characters. Their reaction to pain constructs a motif of pain management. For the sake of letting children stay innocent from the harsh treatments of the world for as long as possible, adults don’t speak of theses realities in the presence of children. Baldwin constructs a†¦show more content†¦The character of the mother executes the tell-tale signs of counterfeit happiness when she tells the murderous story of the narrator’s father’s brother. â€Å"‘Oh honey,’ she said, ‘there’s a lot that you don’t know. But you are going to find out’† (36). If pain is inevitable then maybe the best course of action would be to have a reason to suffer. Baldwin’s character Sonny effectively portrays this mindset. In a conversation with his older brother Sonny asks, â€Å"‘why do people suffer? Maybe it’s better to do something to give it a reason, any reason’† (44). Sonny’s reason to suffer is from his heroin addiction. He is a musician with an acute sensitivity to the dark environment around him. He feels a deeper, harsher connection to the human’s fate to suffer. â€Å"‘I’ve been something I didn’t recognize, didn’t know I could be. Didn’t know anybody could be,’ [Sonny says] ‘Sometimes, you know, and it was actually when I was most out of the world that I felt that I was in it, that I was with it, really, and I could play, it just came out of me, it was there’† (45). By creating a reason for suffering, Sonny seems to su ffer more. He reaches a dark, low level and alters who he was, loses his identity. Suffering is what he channeled through his music, because of suffering being everywhere. â€Å"It filled everything, the people, the music, the dark, quicksilver barmaid, with menace: and this menaceShow MoreRelatedJames BaldwinS Sonnys Blues713 Words   |  3 Pagesï » ¿Harrisons Blues There can be little doubt that the characters who are the most similar in James Baldwins short story Sonnys Blues, and in Kurt Vonnegut Jr.s short story Harrison Bergeron, are the title characters of each respective work. They both embody conceptions of youth within each story Sonny as the younger brother of the nameless narrator in Baldwins tale, and Bergeron as the son of the George and Hazel Bergeron. 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He uses it first when the older brother (main character) talks about his younger brother Sonny. He says that when Sonny was younger his face was bright and open. He said that he didnt want to believe that he would ever see his brother going down, coming to nothing, all that light in his face gone out. Meaning he had gone from good (cleanRead More The Power of Music in James Baldwins Sonnys Blues Essay1544 Words   |  7 PagesThe Power of Music in James Baldwins Sonnys Blues At first glance, Sonnys Blues seems ambiguous about the relationship between music and drugs. After all, the worlds of jazz and drug addiction are historically intertwined; it could be possible that Sonnys passion for jazz is merely an excuse for his lifestyle and addiction, as the narrator believes for a time. Or perhaps the world that Sonny has entered by becoming involved in jazz is the danger- if he had not encountered jazz