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first draft on Sonnys Blues and the brothers chasm ...

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Tasnia Ahmed Professor James Regan English 220 13 April 2016 Sonny’s Blues The narrator in Sonny’s Blues believed that the seven years difference between his and his brothers age lay between them like a chasm. He said that he wondered if these years would ever operate between them as a bridge. The brothers have differences far more important than just their age that alienates one from the other. The narrator tries his best to avoid and allow any tragedy affect him too emotionally. He has a difficult time expressing his feelings and stores them deep inside. He misapprehends how to greet these emotions and deal with them. Sonny’s music works as a saving grace, allowing him to vocalize those unheard words. Sonny has to absorb the tragedies and sufferings in his life in order to create this artistic expression through his music. While his music offers him a chance to become progress, it also threatens to wreck him. Sonny is aware of the risks of turning back to drugs through his music, but he chooses to accept and face this burden. In the final scene, the brothers bridged their chasm temporarily. Sonny translated his endurance in his music, which redeemed the narrator to bear with his own physical and emotional imprisonment. Sonny and his older brother are both physically and subjectively trapped throughout the story as they continue to struggle to escape from these barriers. They lost both their parents years ago, and their mother asked the narrator to become his brother’s keeper. The narrator is correct in believing that the brothers’ age differences lay between

them as a chasm. While maturity is not defined by age, a person’s age may affect their way of life and thinking. While the narrator went away for the army because of his loathsome towards Harlem, he continued to live in one of the housing projects there with his family. Sonny on the other hand left Harlem to create a life of his own. However, Sonny turned to drugs, which led to his arrest and caused him to be physically locked up. The narrator is not addicted to drugs unlike many of the men from his community, but he is trapped inside Harlem and its housing projects. He struggles and fails to communicate with Sonny about his suffering until he listens to his brother’s music, which offers him a unusual view of himself. Barbara Dodds Stanford failed to list Sonny’s Blues in Baldwin’s list of works when she mentioned that in Baldwin’s works “it is a relief to recognize our own struggle to find ourselves.” She also implied that young students can relate to “young people struggling to assert their own independence and identity.” Elaine R. Ognibene stated that Sonny’s Blues is relevant to what Stanford said because it concerns itself with the fractures in family bonds. Ognibene describes Sonny’s journey of suffering as “his descent to the underworld through drugs and his resurrection through jazz.” She refers to the narrator as the “white” Negro and says that although he is older, he is not wiser. I believe all people are trying to find themselves and this usually starts from a young age. Many fall victim to bad influences like drugs like Sonny did. However, what makes us stronger is when we learn to become independent when finding out identities. When all was hopeless, Sonny turned to music, and through his music he found ways to reveal his frustration and longings. The fragment between the two brothers is evident from the beginning of the story when we read about the narrator hearing about his younger

brother’s arrest from a newspaper. We also see age being a factor to this chasm that lies between the brothers when the narrator speaks with Sonny’s friend in the beginning. He says that the boy is Sonny’s friend and not his because the boy is too young for him. In this scene the narrator showed disdain for the boy, yet he gave him five dollars before he left him, fully aware that Sonny’s friend would use it on drugs. The narrator approaches his brother and his sentiments the same way when he chooses to avoid and just go along with it. Ognibene claimed that the author used Sonny and his music as tools to help the narrator reconcile with his racial heritage. (Ognibene 36) After reading the newspaper the narrator said he was scared for Sonny but he was actually afraid of reestablishing contact with Sonny for he would face a condition of dissonance. Ognibene describes the narrator’s existence as someone who is orderly middle class and unable to acknowledge his drug addict brother. The narrator did not reach out to Sonny until his daughter Gracie passed away. When he brought Sonny back to the house, he said he was trying to find out something about his brother. Sonny admits his eagerness to become a musician when his brother questions him, but the narrator feels that Sonny being a musician is beneath him. This could be because of his closeness to white stereotypes and he dismisses Sonny’s ambition as a phase that “kids go through.” The narrator gives up when things refuse to go his way but Sonny realizes that things take time and being a musician is what he wants to do. However, the narrator continues to treat Sonny’s music as an “excuse for the life he led,” and only begins to understand his brother’s anguish and despair when he has his own personal suffering. The author uses suffering as a bond and force to communication between the brothers. When Sonny explains his use of drugs, it is the narrator’s first honest attempt to listen to his brother.

He says “I had held silence for so long, when he had needed human speech to help him.” When he agrees to go to the nightclub with Sonny, the narrator enters Sonny’s World. After listening to Sonny play his music, the narrator says the music hit something in him. It invokes an image of his past which allows him to grasp that people’s joys and sorrows must always be heard. The tales of their sorrows and joys are the only light that can be found in the darkness. He hears Sonny’s blues and gets his personal history back that he no longer needs to extinguish. (Ognibene 37) Music plays a central role throughout the story and also helps bring the brothers together in their suffering. Sonny views the world as a place different than when his older brother grew up, and a place that needs new artistic forms to convey its reality. In the end, the narrator is brought to a gradual enlightenment and accepts Sonny’s blues, which allows him to make part with his own. It is ideal how this scene is shortly after the street revival scene the narrator witnessed earlier. Three sisters and their brother were singing the song “Old Ship of Zion” which is about a ship that carries believers safely across unknown waters and lands them to a promised land (Zion) which is a paradise for believers. The narrator believed that not one of the people watching the revival had been rescued and not one of them believed in the holiness of the four siblings that were singing. However, it seemed that while many did not take the revival serious, the music seemed to relieve a sort of poison out of them temporarily. The exception when the narrator heard his brother’s music from what he witnessed earlier is that there is a real redemption available through music. Albert Murray says that the blues being a state of being and music are basic to the structures of the story. He said the blues are synonymous to the low spirits that the two

brothers have had their share of. As music, the blues are considered to many blacks an a reflection of and a release from the suffering they endured since the days of slavery. The black heritage that impresses itself upon Sonny’s brother is reflected when Sonny plays his music at the end of the story. Sonny’s blues brings the narrator back into the community of his black brothers and sisters that he never left physically. Sonny struggles with his music, which is indicative of how he struggles with his life: He and the piano stammered, started one way, got scared, stopped; started another way, panicked, marked time, started again; then seemed to have found a direction, panicked again, got stuck.” (Albert 179) Suzie Bernstein Goldman states that theme, form and image blend into a perfect harmony in this story of two black brothers struggling to comprehend the other. The shocking discovery of Sonny’s arrest forces the narrator to confront his past refusal to accept the tragic truth around him. The revival scene displayed that there is a greater brotherhood among people than a mere blood relationship. The narrator starts to realize that this music saves them for it “seemed to sooth a poison out of them.” He is led directly to Sonny’s invitation from his simultaneous recognition of the meaning of brotherhood and how powerful music can be. (Goldman 232) Sonny asks his brother to come listen to his music that night and the narrator agrees. When Sonny plays his song, he finds a way to listen, though he confesses that heroin sometimes helped release him from the storm. He wishes for his brother to hear the storm too. The ending of the story brought the two themes of miscommunication and music together. Creole, the leader of the group guides Sonny as he began to play. Sonny’s music stirred the special memories in the brothers’ lives and showed that these blues belong to everyone. He symbolize the

darkness, which surrounds all of those who fail to listen and remain unheard by the ones around them. (Goldman 233) In conclusion, Sonny translating his endurance in his music helped to redeem the narrator to bear with his emotional and physical suffering. The narrator said that he could see the moonlit road where his uncle had died. It brought something back to him and carried him past it. He saw his little girl again, and felt his wife Isabel’s tears again. The narrator began to feel his own tears to rise. Sonny’s music temporarily freed the narrator and offered him a glimpse of himself. The brothers’ suffering and music helped bridge the chasm that lay between them for years.

Works Cited Albert, Richard N.. “The Jazz-blues Motif in James Baldwin's "sonny's Blues"”. College Literature 11.2 (1984): 178–185. Web... Goldman, Suzy Bernstein. “James Baldwin's "sonny's Blues": A Message in Music”. Negro American Literature Forum 8.3 (1974): 231–233. Web... Ognibene, Elaine R.. “Black Literature Revisited: "sonny's Blues"”. The English Journal 60.1 (1971): 36–37. Web... Reilly, John M.. “"sonny's Blues": James Baldwin's Image of Black Community”.Negro American Literature Forum 4.2 (1970): 56–60. Web......