More handpicked essays just for you.
James baldwin sonny's blues literary analysis light and dark
James baldwin sonny's blues literary analysis light and dark
Point of view of suffering in sonny's blues
Don’t take our word for it - see why 10 million students trust us with their essay needs.
People often struggle to understand or fail to understand their setting of the surroundings and the relationships they are in. They can either accept the lightness or fight through the darkness. The darkness that is being shown in “Sonny's Blues” by James Baldwin is the reality of life, choosing to do good or bad by the choices you make. In the streets of Harlem as a community, there were youth that were struggling to make their way out of there. The struggles were affected by the drugs and crimes surrounding the community. It was nature to the streets of Harlem because they were so used to it, which is why escaping from the darkness in their lives was hard because the drugs were a part of their culture. Sonny a jazz musician who's struggling for his music to be found, finds himself …show more content…
The narrator brought up multiple points to think of towards the silence that was in the room and “the darkness growing against the window panes and you hear the street noises every now and again, or maybe the jangling beat of a tambourine from one of the churches close by, but it’s real quiet in the room.”(167) He describes the darkness as the older generation of his family that built the tradition of darkness in Harlem that his family carries for there to be no hope. He, also, remembers the children sitting on their mother's lap and he targets at “ The silence, the darkness coming, and the darkness in the faces frightens will never stop- will never die.”(167) “But something deep and watchful in the child knows that this is bound to end, is already ending..and when lights fills the room, the child is filled with darkness.”(168) In these imagery of words, the narrator shows that with the light of knowledge there is hope of success for the youth in Harlem. The lights gives the youth hope, even though they notice the light of
Buddha has famously been attributed saying that “No one saves us but ourselves. No one can and no one may. We ourselves must walk the path.” In life others pave pathways that we must take that may seem suitable, and if we diverge we are seen as rebellious. The short story Sonny’s Blues by James Baldwin, is narrated by Sonny’s older brother who shares from his perspective the struggles in life he and his brother go through growing up in the projects of Harlem, New York. Using imagery that makes readers feel as though they are experiencing it as well, the author vividly portrays the difficulties of finding a path in life through the various factors that inhibit one such as family, friends, and the cultural standard ascribed to one. In the story,
In James Baldwin’s short story “Sonny’s Blues,” and Ernest Hemingway’s short story “A Clean, Well-Lighted Place,” both have a theme of agony and desire which are represented by characters from the stories such as Sonny from Sonny’s Blues, and the old waiter in A Clean, Well-Lighted Place. Sonny’s Blue’s is a story that are about two brothers who grew up in Harlem New York, and how one brother which is Sonny faced several hardships during his time there, such as doing drugs, getting in fights with their father, and dropping out of school. The older brother was asked to take care of his younger brother as a dying wish from their mother, so the brother asked Sonny what he wanted to do and sonny replied by saying he wanted to become a jazz musician,
In James Baldwin's "Sonny's Blues" a pair of brothers try to make sense of the urban decay that surrounds and fills them. This quest to puzzle out the truth of the shadows within their hearts and on the streets takes on a great importance. Baldwin meets his audience at a halfway mark: Sonny has already fallen into drug use, and is now trying to return to a clean life with his brother's aid. The narrator must first attempt to understand and make peace with his brother's drug use before he can extend his help and heart to him. Sonny and his brother both struggle for acceptance. Sonny wants desperately to explain himself while also trying to stay afloat and out of drugs. Baldwin amplifies these struggles with a continuous symbolic motif of light and darkness. Throughout "Sonny's Blues" there is a pervasive sense of darkness which represents the reality of life on the streets of Harlem. The darkness is sometimes good but usually sobering and sometimes fearful, just as reality may be scary. Light is not simply a stereotypical good, rather it is a complex consciousness, an awareness of the dark, and somehow, within that knowledge there lies hope. Baldwin's motif of light and darkness in "Sonny's Blues" is about the sometimes painful nature of reality and the power gained from seeing it.
All of humanity suffers at one point or another during the course of their lives. It is in this suffering, this inevitable pain, that one truly experiences life. While suffering unites humankind, it is how we choose to cope with this pain that defines us as individuals. The question becomes do we let suffering consume us, or do we let it define our lives? Through James Baldwin’s story, “Sonny’s Blues”, the manner by which one confronts the light and darkness of suffering determines whether one is consumed by it, or embraces it in order to “survive.” Viewing a collection of these motifs, James Baldwin’s unique perspective on suffering as a crucial component of human development becomes apparent. It is through his compassionate portrayal of life’s inescapable hardships that one finds the ability to connect with humankind’s general pool of hardship. James Baldwin’s “Sonny’s Blues” makes use of the motifs of darkness and light to illuminate the universal human condition of suffering and its coping mechanisms.
In James Baldwin’s short story, Sonny’s Blues, he describes a story of pain and prejudice. The theme of suffering makes the reader relate to it. The story is told from the realistic point of view of Sonny’s brother. The setting and time of the story also has great significance to the story. From beginning to end, the story is well developed.
Though racial and sexual issues seem to continuously serve a main purpose in James Baldwin’s writings, oppression can be described as a useful theme in both “Sonny’s Blues and Going to Meet the Man”( Murphy 6). In “Sonny’s Blues” we meet the narrator, Sonny’s brother who runs into one of Sonny’s old friends who begins conversing with Sonny’s brother about Sonny’s recent arrest. Sonny’s old friend tells the narrator that he “can’t much help Sonny no more” which upsets him because it makes him realize how much he had given up on trying to help his brother. Sonny was suffering from drug abuse, and was in desperate need of a savior. After the
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.
In James Baldwin's "Sonny's Blues" the symbolic motif of light and darkness illustrates the painful nature of reality the two characters face as well as the power gained through it. The darkness represents the actuality of life on the streets of the community of Harlem, where there is little escape from the reality of drugs and crime. The persistent nature of the streets lures adolescents to use drugs as a means of escaping the darkness of their lives. The main character, Sonny, a struggling jazz musician, finds himself addicted to heroin as a way of unleashing the creativity and artistic ability that lies within him. While using music as a way of creating a sort of structure in his life, Sonny attempts to step into the light, a life without drugs. The contrasting images of light and darkness, which serve as truth and reality, are used to depict the struggle between Sonny and the narrator in James Baldwin's "Sonny's Blues."
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.
Several passages found throughout "Sonny's Blues" indicate that as a whole, the neighborhood of Harlem is in the turmoil of a battle between good and evil. The narrator describes Sonny's close encounters with the evil manifested in drugs and crime, as well as his assertive attempts at distancing himself from the darker side. The streets and communities of Harlem are described as being a harsh environment which claims the lives of many who have struggled against the constant enticement of emotional escape through drugs, and financial escape through crime. Sonny's parents, just like the others in Harlem, have attempted to distance their children from the dark sides of their community, but inevitably, they are all aware that one day each child will face a decisionb for the first time. Each child will eventually join the ranks of all the other members of society fighting a war against evil at the personal level so cleanly brought to life by James Baldwin. Amongst all the chaos, the reader is introduced to Sonny's special secret weapon against the pressures of life: Jazz. Baldwin presents jazz as being a two-edged sword capable of expressing emotions like no other method, but also a presenting grave danger to each individual who bears it. Throughout the the story, the reader follows Sonny's past and present skirmishes with evil, his triumphs, and his defeats. By using metaphorical factors such as drugs and jazz in a war-symbolizing setting, Baldwin has put the focus of good and evil to work at the heart of "Sonny's Blues."
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.
"Sonny's Blues" is filled with examples of music and how it makes things better. The schoolboy, the barmaid, the mother, the brother, the uncle, the street revivalists, all use music to create a moment when life isn't so ugly, even though the world still waits outside and trouble stretches above. Music and the tale it tells provide hope and joy; instead of being the instrument of Sonny's destruction, introducing him to the world of drugs, music is his way out of some of the ugliness. For Sonny and the other characters in this story, music is a bastion against the despair that pervades stunted lives; it is the light that guides them from the darkness without hope.
“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...
After reading the short story "Sonny's Blues" by James Baldwin, I find there are two major themes that Baldwin is trying to convey, suffering and irony. The first theme that he brings out and tries to get the reader to understand is the theme of suffering. The second theme that the author illustrates is the theme of irony.