James Baldwin did not want to write this play…at first. He thought American Theatre to be, “…a series, merely, of commercial speculations, stale, repetitious, and timid” (Baldwin 4). In other words, he thought it to be much like today’s Hollywood: the same money making melodramatic plots that are hashed-out over and over again so no one has to gamble on projects that push the envelope. It was not until his friend, Medgar Evers, took him through the back-woods of Mississippi to investigate the 1955 murder of a young Black teen named Emmett Till, and the later death of Evers, that Baldwin decided to write his first play. Baldwin bore witness to Evers’ inspections and hushed inquiries all night as they were followed by state troopers. Years later, these memories would compel Baldwin to finish Blues for Mister Charlie (4-6).
The original Broadway production premiered at the ANTA Playhouse owned by The American National Theater and Academy in 1964 (IBDB). The theater still stands to this day, but due to the plethora of times it has changed hands, it is now known as the August Wilson Theatre after its most recently deceased owner. Previews began on Tuesday, April 14th, just before the spring season on Broadway. Previews are a productions way of testing out a show before officially opening. Technical and acting changes may still be made and, in worse case scenarios, a show may be stopped mid-performance to fix something. For this reason, the tickets are usually cheaper. After 8 previews, the show of the show officially opened a week later on the Thursday the 23rd. The production lasted the whole season and closed on Saturday, August 29th of the same year with a total of 148 performances. This is not considered a particularly long run. ...
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...rlem Arts Theatre. Advertisement. New Haarlem Arts Theatre. The City College of New York. Web. 04 June 2011. .
• Taubman, Howard. "Theater: 'Blues for Mister Charlie'" Rev. of Blues For Mister Charlie: A Drama In Three Acts. New York Times [New York] 24 Apr. 1964. The New York Times. The New York Times Company. Web. 30 May 2011. .
• Turner, Darwin T. "Visions of Love and Manliness in a Blackening World: Dramas of Black Life from 1953-1970." The Iowa Review Spring 6.2 (1975): 82-99. JSTOR. Web. 30 May 2011. .
• Untold Story of Emmett Louis Till, The. Dir. Keith Beauchamp. Till Freedom Come Productions, LLC, 2005. The Untold Story of Emmett Louis Till. TH!NKFiLM COMPANY INC. Web. 3 June 2011. .
The work, the Souls of Black Folk explains the problem of color-line in the twentieth century. Examining the time following the civil war the author, W.E.B. Dubois, explains the African American experience of living behind the “veil”. To fully explain the experience of living behind the veil, he provides the reader with situations that a black race experiences in reconstruction. This allowed the readers to metaphorically step into the veil with him. He accomplishes this with the use of “songs of sorrow” with were at the beginning of each chapter, and with the use of anecdotes.
The transition of being a black man in a time just after slavery was a hard one. A black man had to prove himself at the same time had to come to terms with the fact that he would never amount to much in a white dominated country. Some young black men did actually make it but it was a long and bitter road. Most young men fell into the same trappings as the narrator’s brother. Times were hard and most young boys growing up in Harlem were swept off their feet by the onslaught of change. For American blacks in the middle of the twentieth century, racism is another of the dark forces of destruction and meaninglessness which must be endured. Beauty, joy, triumph, security, suffering, and sorrow are all creations of community, especially of family and family-like groups. They are temporary havens from the world''s trouble, and they are also the meanings of human life.
Reilly, John M. " 'Sonny's Blues': James Baldwin's Image of Black Community." James Baldwin: A Critical Evaluation. Ed.Therman B. O'Daniel. Howard University Press. Washington, D.C. 1977. 163-169.
Baldwin, James. “Sonny’s Blues.” Literature: An Introduction to Fiction, Poetry, Drama, and Writing. Ed. X.J. Kennedy and Dana Gioia.12th ed. New York: Pearson, 2013. Print.
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.
In “Sonny’s Blues,” Baldwin’s metaphors relate the emotions of his characters. His writing makes the experience of living in Harlem as a black person in the 1950s real for the reader. Moreover, “Sonny’s Blues” is a story that is universally relatable on human level, as the emotions and relationships Baldwin reveals are not unique to the story’s
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.
As a grown black male Baldwin had encompassed a range of experiences, both horrifying and gratuitous. Those occurrences most treacherous were a focal point when he adds that, “It doesn’t matter any longer what you do to me; you can put me in jail, you can kill me. By the time I was 17, you’d done everything that you could do to me” (“The Negro” 2). Reflecting back on “Down at the Cross” for a moment, Baldwin starts by explaining the metamorphosis of both the black girls and boys. Most of his friends became pimps and whores, and the b...
...cy." Western Journal Of Black Studies 28.1 (2004): 327-331. Academic Search Premier. Web. 18 Sept. 2013.
In the story, Sonny’s Blues, James Baldwin uses music, jazz, and hymns to shape the story and show how it shapes Sonny’s life and how music is inherent to his survival. All of this is seen through the older brother’s eyes; the older brother is the narrator and the reader begins to understand Sonny through the older brother’s perspective. Baldwin writes the story like a jazz song to make a story out of his father’s past and his brother’s career choice and puts them together, going back and forth, until it creates a blending of histories and lives. He shows how the father’s past is similar to the narrator’s life; the older brother has conflicts with his younger brother, Sonny. Music heals the relationship.
Karenga, Malauna. Introduction to Black Studies. Los Angeles: University of Sankore Press Third Edition, 2002.
Brothers tend to grow apart yet eventually find a way to revive an old beat up relationship. These brothers grew up on the rough streets of Harlem and went their separate ways. Sonny was a drug-addicted musician and his older brother was a high school algebra teacher with a family. The way the two brothers reunite through addiction, memories and strife make their bond seem stronger than ever. Sonny’s Blues, by James Baldwin, is a story about enlightenment through brotherhood when Sonny and his brother go to the club.
The narrator in James Baldwin’s short story, “Sonny’s Blues”, at first glance seems to be a static character, trying to forget the past and constantly demeaning his brother’s choices in life. Throughout the story, readers see how the narrator has tried to forget the past. However, his attempt to forget the past soon took a turn. When the narrator’s daughter died, he slowly started to change. As the narrator experiences these changes in his life, he becomes a dynamic character.
“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...
The Souls of Black Folk by W.E.B Dubois is a influential work in African American literature and is an American classic. In this book Dubois proposes that "the problem of the Twentieth Century is the problem of the color-line." His concepts of life behind the veil of race and the resulting "double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one's self through the eyes of others," have become touchstones for thinking about race in America. In addition to these lasting concepts, Souls offers an evaluation of the progress of the races and the possibilities for future progress as the nation entered the twentieth century.