All That Jazz

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All That Jazz

The 1920's were an era of jazz, drugs, and booze. Many youths were caught in the embellished lifestyle that these societal sins promised, yet disappointed in its inability to fill their emptiness. The theme of "Sonny's Blues", by James Baldwin, is the emotional darkness that fills the narrators family not only from Sonny's drug use, but also from the unfortunate events that plague the family. Baldwin uses strong imagery to depict the darkness in the family's lives.

Baldwin consistently uses images of shadows to show the despair the narrator is in over Sonny's ruin. The narrator "[does not] want to believe that [he would] ever see [Sonny] going down, coming to nothing, all that light in his face [going] out, in the condition [he has] already see so many others" (Baldwin 42). It is hard for him to see his brother, someone who he had played with as a child, succumb to the hard, dark life of drugs and jazz. The narrator relates to the young boys he sees on the streets of Harlem, remembering his childhood. He describes these boys as "filled with rage" as they recognize "the two darknesses, the darkness of their lives . . . and the darkness of the movies, which blind[s] them to the other darkness . . ." (42). In these children, the narrator sees his broken brother. As he is leaving the school where he teaches, he sees "another boy, standing in the shadow of a doorway, looking just like Sonny . . . [not] Sonny, but somebody [he] used to know . . . Sonny's friend . . . always high and raggy . . ." (42-43). Even though this boy is obviously not Sonny, the narrator cannot help but take another look at him. He wants to remember Sonny as his fun-loving, innocent little brother, but he knows that in reality, Sonny has become a drug addict, living a hard, decrepit life.

The imagery for darkness is carried over to the lives of Sonny's family and community, also. The narrator, when returning to his family's neighborhood, sees the new houses that have been built and describes them as "houses exactly like the houses of [his] past . . . [and] boys exactly like the boys [he had once] been . . . came down into the streets for light and air and found themselves encircled by disaster. Some escaped the trap, most didn't .

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