49 pages • 1 hour read
James BaldwinSonny's Blues
Fiction | Short Story | Adult | Published in 1957A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Themes
Healing Power of Music
Throughout “Sonny’s Blues” Baldwin explores the relationship between music and suffering, presenting music as a crucial method by which individuals can process and deal with their suffering and pain. Though the theme of music is primarily expressed through Sonny, who is a jazz pianist, Baldwin also explores gospel music. In an anecdote later in the story, the narrator and Sonny observe an “old-fashioned revival meeting” taking place on the sidewalk outside the narrator’s apartment (38). The group of three women and a male preacher begin singing a song that has a restorative effect on the listeners outside: “the music seemed to soothe a poison out of them; and time seemed, nearly, to fall away from the sullen, belligerent, battered faces, as though they were fleeing back to their first condition, while dreaming of their last” (39). The music allows the listeners on the street to forget their suffering so much that they appear reborn to the narrator.
The music’s restorative power is elaborated on in the book’s final scene, when the narrator listens to Sonny play piano at the club. As the narrator hears Sonny’s jazz solo, he recognizes how Sonny transmutes his suffering into the music: “Sonny’s fingers filled the air with life, his life” (47). The narrator appreciates how Sonny transforms his pain into something expressive and beautiful, yet the narrator also recognizes that Sonny’s “life contained so many others”: “[Sonny] made [the suffering] his: that long line, of which we knew only Mama and Daddy. And he was giving it back” (47). For the narrator, the blues, an artform created by Black people, reflect the general suffering endured by Black Americans for generations. The narrator hears not only Sonny’s individual life experience in the music but also the experiences of his parents and numerous others who suffered yet found a way to continue living. Rather than portray the blues as melancholic, Baldwin suggests the music to be hopeful, as the narrator remarks that “[Sonny] could help us to be free if we would listen” (47). Within the blues, the narrator glimpses a life free from racism and suffering—a restorative vision that brings tears to the narrator’s eyes.
The Cycle of Racism and Poverty
“Sonny’s Blues” explores how racism is an ongoing cycle that continually traps Black Americans in hardship. Baldwin suggests that the trauma of racism is collective, something all Black people must continually endure so long as the United States remains a racist society. Though individuals respond to this trauma differently, Baldwin’s story suggests that some form of suffering is universal and inevitable. This theme of shared suffering arises principally through the narrator’s observations about society in Harlem. When the narrator describes the Harlem neighborhood where he lives, he notes that the homes there are “really just like the houses in which Sonny and I grew up. The same things happen, they’ll have the same things to remember” (25). Likewise, at the beginning of the story, the narrator sees reflections of himself and his brother in his pupils: “Perhaps I was listening [to the students] because […] in them I heard my brother. And myself” (18). Though a generation divides the narrator and his students, he recognizes that in many ways their lives will play out similarly.
Such recognition of shared suffering leads many of the Black adults in “Sonny’s Blues” to try to protect or warn the youth of the difficulties they will face. As a child, the narrator remembers being around gatherings of adults and recognizing the pain they had endured on their faces as they spoke with each other. However, the narrator writes that such discussions always come to an end when “the old folks will remember the children,” as they don’t want the children to “know too much too soon, about what’s going to happen to [them]” (27). However, when the narrator becomes older, his mother tells him about his uncle’s death, hoping the story will show the narrator the importance of watching after Sonny. Mama explains, “I’m telling you this because you got a brother. And the world ain’t changed” (29). Mama recognizes that despite passing time, American society remains deeply racist at its core. Though her children’s struggles may be different from those of her or her husband, she knows that some form suffering is an inevitable fact of life for all Black Americans.
The Struggles of Heroin Addiction
Through the character of Sonny, Baldwin explores the personality and struggles of a heroin addict. During the 1950s, when Baldwin wrote “Sonny’s Blues,” heroin addiction was prevalent in the United States. A major focus of “Sonny’s Blues” is how heroin addiction damages an individual, as well as the psychological reasons why someone may be driven to addiction. Though Baldwin does not condone heroin usage, he offers an empathetic portrait of drug addiction that sees addicts as real people rather than degenerates or criminals. In the final conversation between Sonny and the narrator, Sonny reveals what drove him to addiction: Taking heroin allowed him to “feel in control,” which he often needed to feel to play piano (40). The narrator is initially critical of Sonny’s reliance on heroin until Sonny explains the depth of his pain: “You walk these streets, black and funky and cold, and there’s not really a living ass to talk to, and there’s nothing shaking, and there’s no way of getting it out—that storm inside” (42). Baldwin portrays Sonny not as an individual succumbing to weakness or temptation but as someone driven to drugs to deal with the intense emotional pain caused by living in a racist society. Though Sonny is sober after his time in prison, he knows that heroin addiction is a lifelong struggle and informs his brother that “it can come again” (43).
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