The Role Of The Narrator In Sonny's Blues By James Baldwin

In every work of literature, the presence of a narrator and a protagonist is crucial to the development of the story. According to the style authors have when writing fiction, narrators may appear as a first person narrator, a third person narrator or an omniscient narrator, among others. The protagonist of a story is the person whom the story is about and who creates the whole story through actions. However, sometimes it may be difficult for the reader of the story to identify whether the protagonist is the narrator or another character who is present in the narration. Besides, there are times when the main character actually is not the protagonist of the story. To recognize the main character of a story, readers have to look for the character involved with the plot throughout the whole story and who is impacted by the protagonist and the main conflict. Occasionally, readers cannot identify who the main character of a story is because the way the author chose to build up the narration confuses them. This seems to be the case of the short story ‘Sonny’s Blues’ written by James Baldwin, which is an example of an atypical story. Since its main events seem to pertain to Sonny, the readers may infer that he is the main character, but the opinions, thoughts and emotions that appear in the story are from another character of

The reader learns through Sonny’s wordings that the narrator has difficulties to understand his brother’s wishes and desires to become a musician. This situation, for instance, is shown when Sonny says to his brother: ‘you never hear anything I say.’ What is more, the narrator feels guilty for not being able to strengthen the bond with his brother and for not keeping the promise he made to his mother about taking care of Sonny. When the narrator has the chance to spend a few days with his younger brother, little by little, his inner conflict begins to