“The short story “Sonny’s Blues” by James Baldwin tells a story of estrangement and reconciliation between two brothers, the unnamed narrator and his brother Sonny. While it is a short story, Baldwin writes so much backstory that “Sonny’s Blues” can sometimes make a reader feel like they are reading a small novel. Baldwin’s style of writing carries intense emotional undertones which adds another dimension to the writing.
The narrator, who is a school teacher, finds out that his brother Sonny has been arrested and taken to prison for selling and using heroin. The narrator still has love for his brother and is trying to not believe it, but it is confirmed by Sonny’s friend who hangs around the narrator’s school and sometimes asks him for money. The narrator asks Sonny’s friend various questions, but at the same time, he is put off by the friend. According to the friend, he is the one who got Sonny into drugs. Baldwin writes, “‘I never give Sonny nothing,’ the boy said finally, ‘but a long time ago I come to school high and Sonny asked me how it felt.’ He paused, I couldn’t bear to watch him, I watched the barmaid, and I listened to the music which seemed to be causing the pavement to shake. “I told him it felt great” (Baldwin). To me, the narrator’s discussion with Sonny’s friend represents the first turning point in the story in which the narrator and Sonny start to reconcile. In this moment, the narrator starts to understand Sonny a little more than what he did before. This leads him to later contact Sonny.
One of the more impressive things about Baldwin’s writing style is how much dialogue he can write in a story without making the story read like it has too much dialogue. Towards the middle of the story, the narrator’s mother tells the narrator what happened to his father’s brother in one long continuous block that is nearly the entire page. In most cases, I imagine a writer would have to break this up into several paragraphs of dialogue. In this case, I believe it works perfectly with what Baldwin was trying to portray. I can imagine that block of dialogue being a monologue in a movie.
To me, the character of Sonny seems like the misunderstood, eccentric, creative artist/musician archetype. Even though this story is set during around the mid 1960s, Sonny likes “new age” things like Hindu yogis and firewalks and meditation and things of that nature. These are things that gained popularity after his time period, and the narrator’s views on these things reflect how people actually thought about “new age” things during that time, “Years ago, when he was around fourteen, he’d been all hipped on the idea of going to India. He read books about people sitting on rocks, naked in all kinds of weather but mostly bad, naturally, and walking barefoot through hot coals and arriving at wisdom. I used to say that it sounded to me as though they were getting away from wisdom as fast as they could. I think he sort of looked down on me for that”. Besides Sonny’s spiritual leanings towards India, Sonny’s passion for music and jazz also has a spiritual connotation to it as well. Clearly, Sonny is a “tortured soul”; he dealt with addiction and imprisonment. However, he undergoes a rebirth process through jazz, which is a main theme in “Sonny’s Blues”.
What is also interesting in “Sonny’s Blues” is the historical context and how much it plays into the overall themes, symbolism, and metaphors in the story. Jazz is a metaphor for spiritual birth and rebirth in the story. It can also be said that the friend who initially tells the narrator about Sonny could be representative of the demons that Sonny is dealing with. Sonny’s addictions deal with wanting to feel something more. It also has to do with a kind of survival instinct,
“‘That’s right,’ he said cheerfully.
‘You see what I mean.’
‘Tell me, I said at last, “why does he want to die? He must want to die, he’s killing himself, why does he want to die?’
He looked at me in surprise. He licked his lips. ‘He don’t want to die. He wants to live. Don’t nobody want to die, ever.’
Sonny’s drug habit, according to his friend, is a form of survival. Because Sonny wanted to feel more, to live, he turned to drugs. With the history that he is hinted to have inherited based on the mother’s monologue, it can be assumed Sonny pursued drugs in order to escape the demons of his family, which are racially charged, but he experiences a rebirth through jazz.
The characterization of Sonny by Baldwin is very complex. Considering the story is only fourteen pages speaks to Baldwin’s talent for writing. He uses a deep historical context, and the darkness of human nature to make a truly deep character. Any writer who wants to illustrate that level of depth in writing should learn from what Baldwin is able to do in limited pages.
