Joy Williams, “The Blue Men” is a story about a woman who struggles to face and accept her past while trying not to let it consume her. May, our main character, her son had been executed for the murder of a deputy and his drug dog, and she was left to care for his son, Bomber. May is all alone, aside from her grandson and these photos and postcards she carries around in her purse. She is slowly becoming unseen to everyone around her, even herself. One night, on her way home, her purse was stolen from her, and for a short time she felt relief, but the purse was returned to her. The purse disappeared again, but this time by Mays doing, but again it came back to her. It is these moments, when the purse returns to her again and again, that show …show more content…
“She did it with such stealth that the girl didn’t even know that May had touched her. (p. 104)” This scene symbolizes how May has become so consumed by her past that she is almost nonexistent, that people do not even notice that she is there. And when she and Bomber are seen, they are only identified as the condemned man’s mother or the condemned man’s son. The two are only identified through the past. Even in their quest to start a new life, they are still haunted by their troubling past, and even though they try to escape it, it will not let …show more content…
May did not want Edith living with them, she wanted her and Bomber to move on, but somehow she still submitted to it. “Of course, dear,” May said. She was frightened and this surprised her, for she could scarcely believe she could know fright again after what happened to them, but there it was, some thing beyond the worst thing – some disconnection, some demand. She remembered telling Edith that she was going to plant bulbs in the garden when fall came, but she wasn’t going to do it, certainly not. “No,” May said to her garden, “don’t even think about it.” Edith moved into the yellow room. It was silent there, but May didn’t listen either, (p.107).” The author’s choice to place Edith in the yellow room, along with other hints in the story (i.e. pale face, shaved head, described as a “figure” rather than a person, etc.) suggests that she is ill. She has come into the lives of May and Bomber as a reminder of death, of the past they are trying to leave behind. Although May likes this young girl, she is afraid to let her into their lives, knowing that she will too leave them, and that it will break Bombers heart, as well as
James Baldwin's short story "Sonny's Blues" highlights the struggle because community involvement and individual identity. Baldwin's "leading theme - the discovery of identity - is nowhere presented more successfully than in the short story 'Sonny's Blues" (Reilly 56). Individuals breeds isolation and even persecution by the collective, dominant community. This conflict is illustrated in three ways. First, the story presents the alienation of Sonny from his brother, the unnamed narrator. Second, Sonny's legal problems suggest that independence can cause the individual to break society's legal conventions. Finally, the text draws heavily from biblical influences. Sonny returns to his family just like the prodigal son, after facing substantial trials and being humiliated. The story's allusion to the parable of the prodigal son reflects Baldwin's profound personal interest in Christianity and the bible.
Baldwin, James. "Sonny's Blues." The Oxford Book of American Short Stories 1992: 409 - 439.
In Black and Blue, Fran Benedetto tells a spellbinding story: how at nineteen she fell in love with Bobby Benedetto, how their passionate marriage became a nightmare, why she stayed, and what happened on the night she finally decided to run away with her ten-year-old son and start a new life under a new name. Living in fear in Florida--yet with increasing confidence, freedom, and hope--Fran unravels the complex threads of family, identity, and desire that shape a woman's life, even as she begins to create a new one. As Fran starts to heal from the pain of the past, she almost believes she has escaped it--that Bobby Benedetto will not find her and again provoke the complex combustion between them of attraction and destruction, lust and love. Black and Blue is a beautifully written, heart-stopping story in which Anna Quindlen writes with power, wisdom, and humor about the real lives of men and women, the varieties of people and love, the bonds between mother and child, the solace of family and friendship, the inexplicable feelings between people who are passionately connected in ways they don't understand. It is a remarkable work of fiction by the writer whom Alice Hoffman has called "a national treasure.
In the setting of “Sonny’s Blues” the element of illusion is used to create above all a world of beauty, illness and horror. Baldwin uses the sense of sight in his work. Using colors of vast difference to express to his readers their definition of what good vs bad, and light vs dark is. However it is so much more than that, he gives his readers the opportunity to consider truth. He introduces Sonny a character who fall’s victim to subjectivity and bias. With the tremendous use if illusion and color, Baldwin paints a picture and Sonny’s character is reviled in an almost angelic way. This theme is prevalent throughout the story, and Baldwin’s use of illusion really captures the truth in the story. He uses such colors as yellow to signify the illness of the streets and the drugs that consume them in the character of Sonny’s friend. The color of blue is one that is used often in the story but in different contrasts; blue signifies the beauty of Sonny’s conquering to his addiction...
James Baldwin, author of Sonny’s Blues, was born in Harlem, NY in 1924. During his career as an essayist, he published many novels and short stories. Growing up as an African American, and being “the grandson of a slave” (82) was difficult. On a day to day basis, it was a constant battle with racial discrimination, drugs, and family relationships. One of Baldwin’s literature pieces was Sonny’s Blues in which he describes a specific event that had a great impact on his relationship with his brother, Sonny. Having to deal with the life-style of poverty, his relationship with his brother becomes affected and rivalry develops. Conclusively, brotherly love is the theme of the story. Despite the narrator’s and his brother’s differences, this theme is revealed throughout the characters’ thoughts, feelings, actions, and dialogue. Therefore, the change in the narrator throughout the text is significant in understanding the theme of the story. It is prevalent to withhold the single most important aspect of the narrator’s life: protecting his brother.
Sonny’s Blues written by James Baldwin appears to suggest that family and faith are important aspects in someone’s life and that each person has a different way of dealing with their own demons. The author writes with an expressive purpose and narrative pattern to convey his message and by analyzing the main characters, the point of view of the narration, the conflict in the story and the literary devices Baldwin utilizes throughout his tale, his central idea can be better understood.
Family structure is often built on foundations consisting of, trust, principal, and unconditional love. Relatives are often a reflection of the morals, and dignity our guardians instilled in us. The struggle in families arises when an individual does not live up to the standards set for them, by family, and sometimes results in incarceration, or use of narcotics. In “Sonny’s Blues” by James Baldwin, readers encounter two brothers who are brought up in the rough neighborhood of Harlem, New York. Although Sonny, the younger brother, chooses a different life path in heroin usage, and in being a musician, his older brother, the narrator, becomes an algebra teacher. Despite not being in each other’s lives for a period of time, the knitted fraternal relationship that they share proves to be eternal regardless of their loss of contact. Ultimately, this story is an amazing illustration of how two people are from the same blood and home, are never quite the same, yet the love of a family will always be kindled. In the following articles "Sonny's Blues": A Message in Music, by Suzy Bernstein Goldman, explains how people often explain their emotions through music. In another article titled, -“ Black Literature Revisited: "’Sonny's Blues’" by Elaine R. Ognibene, she elaborates on the effects music has to bring two people together. Finally, in “The Jazz-Blues Motif in James Baldwin's "’Sonny's Blues’" by Richard N Albert discusses, the bound in families and enlightens on the cliché saying that blood is thicker than water. Ultimately, Albert provides the best interpretation of the short story “Sonny Blues,” because it’s more realistic and relatable from my own personal experience.
Richard N. Albert is one critic who explores and analyzes the world of “Sonny’s Blues”. His analysis, “The Jazz-Blues Motif in James Baldwin’s “Sonny’s Blues”” is an example of how one can discover the plot, characterization and jazz motif that builds this theme of suffering. Most good stories start with a fundamental list of ingredients that make up the plot: the initial situation, conflict, complications, climax, suspense, denouement, and conclusion. Great writers sometimes shake up the recipe and add some spice. At the beginning of the story, the narrator reads in the newspaper about Sonny’s arrest for using and selling heroin.
All three of these symbolical details are woven together in "Sonny's Blues" to create a non-literal meaning directly beneath the words. The end result is an enriched message about urban struggles for expression, happiness, and chemical independance. Ultimately, Sonny's revival concludes the readers' literary tour of world in which he lives. What is begun with a presentation of hardships is finally concluded with Sonny's triumph, a chance at a better future.
In "Sonny's Blues" James Baldwin presents an intergenerational portrait of suffering and survival within the sphere of black community and family. The family dynamic in this story strongly impacts how characters respond to their own pain and that of their family members. Examining the central characters, Mama, the older brother, and Sonny, reveals that each assumes or acknowledges another's burden and pain in order to accept his or her own situation within an oppressive society. Through this sharing each character is able to achieve a more profound understanding of his own suffering and attain a sharper, if more precarious, notion of survival.
At first glance, "Sonny's 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 Sonny's 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 he wouldn't have encountered drugs either. But the clues given by the portrayals of music and what it does for other figures in the story demonstrate music's beneficial nature; music and drugs are not interdependent for Sonny. By studying the moments of music interwoven throughout the story, it can be determined that the author portrays music as a good thing, the preserver and sustainer of hope and life, and Sonny's only way out of the "deep and funky hole" of his life in Harlem, with its attendant peril of drugs (414).
The themes in “Sonny’s Blues”, shows a constant struggle between brotherly love and the imagery of how the narrator shows the light and dark of their lives. The mother gives the narrator the obligation to look after his brother no matter what. The light and dark within the story elaborates with imagery and flash back events that gave light and darkness into their lives that were separate but both had problems.
“Sonny’s Blues” revolves around the narrator as he learns who his drug-hooked, piano-playing baby brother, Sonny, really is. The author, James Baldwin, paints views on racism, misery and art and suffering in this story. His written canvas portrays a dark and continual scene pertaining to each topic. As the story unfolds, similarities in each generation can be observed. The two African American brothers share a life similar to that of their father and his brother. The father’s brother had a thirst for music, and they both travelled the treacherous road of night clubs, drinking and partying before his brother was hit and killed by a car full of white boys. Plagued, the father carried this pain of the loss of his brother and bitterness towards the whites to his grave. “Till the day he died he weren’t sure but that every white man he saw was the man that killed his brother.”(346) Watching the same problems transcend onto the narrator’s baby brother, Sonny, the reader feels his despair when he tries to relate the same scenarios his father had, to his brother. “All that hatred down there”, he said “all that hatred and misery and love. It’s a wonder it doesn’t blow the avenue apart.”(355) He’s trying to relate to his brother that even though some try to cover their misery with doing what others deem as “right,” others just cover it with a different mask. “But nobody just takes it.” Sonny cried, “That’s what I’m telling you! Everybody tries not to. You’re just hung up on the way some people try—it’s not your way!”(355) The narrator had dealt with his own miseries of knowing his father’s plight, his Brother Sonny’s imprisonment and the loss of his own child. Sonny tried to give an understanding of what music was for him throughout thei...
In conclusion, the short story "Sonny's Blues" by James Baldwin brings out two main themes: irony and suffering. You can actually feel the pain that Baldwin's characters experience; and distinguish the two different lifestyles of siblings brought up in the same environment. The older brother remaining nameless is a fabulous touch that really made me want to read on. This really piqued my interest and I feel it can lead to many discussions on why this technique was used. I really enjoyed this story; it was a fast and enjoyable reading. Baldwin keeps his readers thinking and talking long after they have finished reading his stories. His writing technique is an art, which very few, if any, can duplicate.
The short story Sonny’s Blues by James Baldwin is written in first person through the narrator. This story focuses on the narrator’s brother sonny and their relationship throughout the years. This story is taken place in Harlem, New York in the 1950s. The narrator is a high school algebra teacher and just discovered his brother in the newspaper. This story includes the traditional elements to every story, which consist of the exposition, conflict, rising action, climax, falling action, and the resolution.