Many different themes of apparent opposition come from reading James Baldwin’s classic short story, Sonny’s Blues. There are themes of life versus death, good versus bad, light versus darkness, safety versus danger, white versus black, seeing versus blindness, and outside versus inside, to name only a few. A theme that encompasses all of these supposed oppositions is order versus chaos. The characters in Sonny’s Blues attempt to make order from the roiling dangers of poverty, addiction, war, and other chaotic elements of life in Harlem of the 1950s. However, Baldwin does not present chaos and order as opposites that cannot interact or that one is more necessary than the other is. In order to gain a sense of self, or self-identity, the characters must learn to balance and incorporate aspects of both chaos and order in their lives.
The two brothers in Sonny’s Blues appear to represent opposites in many ways. The unnamed narrator is a schoolteacher in Harlem, seven years older than his brother, Sonny. At the beginning of the story, the narrator has just read about his brother’s arrest for using and selling heroin. With this opening, it seems like just another story about success and failure, with the narrator a shining example of what staying on the straight path can do, while Sonny is the sad result of a life of bad choices. However, if the story were that simple, it would not need to continue past the first page. Instead, Baldwin takes the reader beyond the apparent opposites of success and failure, of Sonny and his brother, to explore the complexity of order and chaos within both their lives that makes them the men they are at the time of the story.
Critic James Tackach attempts to illustrate Sonny’s Blues as Baldwin’s retelling of the Biblical story of the prodigal son and to envision the narrator as Cain and Sonny as Abel, writing, “Unlike the Cain of Genesis . . . the narrator . . . has the possibility of redemption. To redeem himself, however, the narrator must save his prodigal younger brother” (115). This interpretation seems to allow for no possibility of the intermixture of chaos and order, or redemption versus downfall. Tackach appears to view the narrator as the successful brother, the one who has “escaped the dangers of Harlem’s streets to become a stolid family man” while the fallen brother is in prison because of heroin (112). It is interesting that he views the narrator as the one who needs to be redeemed and holds all the power in saving both brothers. However, if Baldwin had such a concrete view of the world, Sonny’s Blues could not have ended the way it did since it in no way hints at Sonny being saved by his brother. In fact, Tackach’s positive view of the narrator is belied by the fact that in Baldwin’s writing, “he harshly judges his characters who refuse to take risks, who choose safety over vulnerability” (Miller 88). This is not to say that Sonny is not a sort of prodigal son, because the influence of Biblical stories in Baldwin’s writing is well known (Sickels 17). However, because the story goes beyond the mere events of their lives, the ideas of redemption or downfall as absolutes, and explores the difficult interactions of the brothers as they continue to develop identities, it is not just a retelling or parable.
Baldwin himself was no stranger to risk and chaos. In his essay, The New Lost Generation, Baldwin writes, “it seems to me that life was beginning to tell us who we were, and what life was . . . and we did not know that the price of this was experience” (662). He and his fellow artists who left America to live in Paris “had presumably put down all formulas and all safety in favor of the chilling unpredictability of experience” (Baldwin, The New Lost Generation 664). Baldwin seemed to believe that dichotomy was essential to understanding any concept of life, and experience was the key to becoming an artist. In her Biography of James Baldwin, Amy Sickels writes, “Baldwin knew that in order to survive . . . in order to not be defeated, he needed to examine himself and [America]” (12). Therefore, it is less ironic than it seems that in order to get a better look at America, Baldwin had to leave it. There was a reason for him to take the risk of leaving behind everything he knew in America, for it was only from a distance that Baldwin would gain a better view of his birth country and be able to write honestly about it.
The narrator of the story appears to be a man not likely to take risks. Yet, considering Baldwin’s theoretical scorn for those who do not take risks, Sonny’s Blues presents the narrator as a likable character, not one who is viewed under a harsh light by the author or apt to cause derision from readers. Perhaps this is because the incident of Sonny’s arrest begins the narrator’s examination of his own life, his own self-assessment of his own safety and usefulness as a teacher in a Harlem school and to his family. Before, the narrator believed he was doing the right thing not only for himself and his family, but also for the children of Harlem by being a teacher. After reading about Sonny’s arrest, he is able to say, “here I was, talking about algebra to a lot of boys who might . . . be popping off needles every time they went to the head. Maybe it did more for them than algebra could” (Baldwin, Sonny’s Blues 2174). Self-assessment is a risk, just as the narrator letting Sonny live in his home after his release from prison is a risk.
Sonny, on the other hand, is not placed under a shining light of virtue because he is a risk-taker. His trouble with drugs has reached the point where new of his arrest reaches the daily newspaper, and spending two years in prison for dealing drugs is not the future Sonny aspired to. Years before, he and his brother had a conversation concerning his future prospects where Sonny admits, “I’m going to be a musician” (Baldwin, Sonny’s Blues 2182). The narrator responds with many practical arguments against this, but Sonny is adamant when he says, “I think people ought to do what they want to do, what else are they alive for?” (Baldwin, Sonny’s Blues 2184). The risks Sonny took as part of the lifestyle of a musician, including the drugs, have actually taken him away from what it really is he wants to do in life and what he wants to live for, and this is a bad thing.
However, Baldwin does not vilify Sonny, either. In Sonny’s letter to his brother while he is in prison and when the reader meets Sonny upon his return from prison, he appears as an amiable and thoughtful man. When people think of ex-convicts or drug addicts, they often expect belligerent and tough attitudes, violence, and selfishness. The narrator demonstrates these worries when he goes to meet Sonny on the day of his release from prison. He sees a man who is changed, but he also sees “the baby brother I’d never known look[ing] out from the depths of his private life, like an animal waiting to be coaxed into the light” (Baldwin, Sonny’s Blues 2178). Although the narrator describes the first reunion between Sonny and his family as uneventful, he is trying to recall everything he knows about drug addiction and admits, “I couldn’t help watching Sonny for signs” (Baldwin, Sonny’s Blues 2180). Apparently, no such signs stand out. Sonny’s past has not turned him into any kind of monster or demon.
This demonstrates Baldwin’s general idea that as long as we are alive, we are gaining experience and continuing to develop self-identities. Unlike the people in a story such as Hawthorne’s Young Goodman Brown, where characters represent absolutes or specific ideas, Baldwin’s characters represent the change possible in identity that comes with the choices they make and their experiences. The narrator is not simply “the successful man who avoided the dangers of Harlem” and Sonny is not “the failed man who fell into the dangerous traps of Harlem.” However, both of the brothers now have a challenge to face; the narrator needs to learn if he can handle the idea of helping Sonny acclimate to post-prison life, and Sonny to get back to being a musician and not falling back into the trap of drug addiction. Their future self-identities will depend on how they approach this challenge.
Baldwin, as a writer, probably best related to Sonny the musician because like his character, he encountered derision over his passions in life. Baldwin’s step-father, David Baldwin, did not like to see any books other than the Bible in his household and accused those who introduced him to other books as “trying to corrupt his son with books by white devils” (Miller 17). While the narrator does not offer the same derision and violence as Baldwin’s father did when confronted with Sonny’s desire to be a musician, he still confronts Sonny with the idea that there are better, more practical things to do in life. Like Baldwin, Sonny is a risk taker. Risks make people vulnerable to dangers, and as Miller writes in the Blues: James Baldwin and Music, “Music, if it is any good, involves a tremendous amount of risk and vulnerability” (88). Baldwin does not present Sonny’s addiction and prison sentence as the final note to Sonny’s life, but as a kind of “splitting up” of his life into pieces, something everyone has to face at some point in life. Baldwin relates Sonny to himself in his essay The New Lost Generation, discussing how the luckiest people, including himself were the people who stopped running away from things and faced their problems (667). Going to pieces is not and ending, but a chance for people to “put themselves back together with whatever [is left],” Baldwin writes, “This may take away one’s dreams, but it delivers one to oneself” (The New Lost Generation 667). As he leaves prison, this is the process Sonny must begin, to put himself back together again and find himself.
The role the narrator plays in the story is not as a simple contrast to Sonny’s life. His apparently straight and narrow path to his life as a teacher and family man was not a smooth one and does not continue to be so. Like Sonny, he grew up in the same impoverished household and experimented with some of the same things that Sonny did as a youth, like cigarettes and perhaps more serious things. Both are veterans of war. The narrator has experienced trauma with the death of a daughter to polio. The narrator is a teacher, and teachers were some of the biggest influences on Baldwin leading allowing him to immerse himself in books and mentor him, although this parallel would be more apt if the narrator were a music teacher. Part of the narrator’s role is also to play as an agreeable character to readers of all kinds, white, black, rich, poor, and so on. There is nothing particularly offensive about him, he has troubles like everybody does, and is doing an honorable thing by trying to help his distressed brother.
However, unless the two find some middle ground on which they can converse, experience and progress toward self-development is not possible for either of them. Earlier in the story, the narrator says that Sonny’s “music seemed to be merely an excuse for the life he led. It sounded just that weird and disordered” (Baldwin, Sonny’s Blues 2187). However, after Sonny returns from prison, Sonny invites his brother to go with him to a venue to see him play the piano along with some other jazz musicians, and the narrator agrees to go. Both brothers are fully immersed in the experience, Sonny as a musician and the narrator as a listener. Without words, they communicate in a way that they have never been able to before, and “Baldwin . . . manages to convey the power of music to transform within the smaller realm of personal intimacies” (Hardy 57).
The balance between chaos and order is always in flux, and will continue to be so during the course of the brothers’ lives. Though the experience the brothers have as Sonny plays in the bar is transformative for their relationship, it gives no indication of any final salvation for either of them. However, it does show a moment of balance between chaos and order, and the type of moment in which great strides are made in forming personal identity.
Works Cited
Baldwin, James. The New Lost Generation. James Baldwin: Collected Essays. New York, NY: The Library of America, 1998. 659-668. Print.
---. Sonny’s Blues. American Literature Volume Two. Ed. Emory Elliott. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall. 2174-2194. Print.
Hardy, Clarence. A Malevolent God and the Permanence of Black Suffering. James Baldwin’s God: Sex, Hope, and Crisis in Black Holiness Culture. Knoxville, TN: University of Tennessee Press, 2003. 37-58. Print.
Miller, D. Quentin. Using the Blues: James Baldwin and Music. A Historical Guide to James Baldwin. Ed. Douglas Field. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2009. 83-110. Print.
Sickels, Amy. Biography of James Baldwin. James Baldwin. Ed. Harold Bloom. Philadelphia, PA: Chelsea House, 2006. 11-66. Print.
Tackach, James. The Biblical Foundation of James Baldwin’s “Sonny’s Blues.” Renascence 59.2 (2007): 109-118. Print.
Annotated Bibliography
Baldwin, James. The New Lost Generation. James Baldwin: Collected Essays. New York, NY: The Library of America, 1998. 659-668. Print.
Baldwin’s essay deals with a number of issues concerning the causes of “casualties” in his generation including race, living in poverty, living in America, being veterans of WWII, and bring expatriates in Paris. It is written as a testimony to the idea that as expatriates, he and his fellow artists were able to find, become, and accept themselves.
---. Sonny’s Blues. American Literature Volume Two. Ed. Emory Elliott. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall. 2174-2194. Print.
Sonny’s Blues is a short story describing the relationship of two brothers, one who is a teacher in Harlem and the other who has just gotten out of jail for using and selling drugs. They have never been really close, but with their parents dead, the narrator finds himself responsible for helping his brother find a place for himself in the world after returning from prison.
Hardy, Clarence. A Malevolent God and the Permanence of Black Suffering. James Baldwin’s God: Sex, Hope, and Crisis in Black Holiness Culture. Knoxville, TN: University of Tennessee Press, 2003. 37-58. Print.
Hardy’s article describes the autobiographical nature of Baldwin to his characters and the development of his ambivalence toward God as a result of his life experiences. It relates his ideas of who suffers because of race and religion. His ambivalence is based in the idea that suffering is both a terrible thing but also necessary for artistic creativity.
Miller, D. Quentin. Using the Blues: James Baldwin and Music. A Historical Guide to James Baldwin. Ed. Douglas Field. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2009. 83-110. Print.
Miller discusses the influence of the blues on Baldwin’s work. He explains how the blues play in integral part for Baldwin in examining self-identity in respect to being an artist, his own race, his citizenship, expatriate life, and so forth. He discusses how specific musicians, such as Bessie Smith, influenced Baldwin, and the effect music has on personal relationships. In addition, he mentions how music plays a pivotal role in the intersection of the holy and the secular which caused Baldwin much ambivalence.
Sickels, Amy. Biography of James Baldwin. James Baldwin. Ed. Harold Bloom. Philadelphia, PA: Chelsea House, 2006. 11-66. Print.
Sickles’s article is a thoughtful and thorough examination of Baldwin’s life. Her writing is not a critical assessment of Baldwin, but a look at the basic facts of his life.
Tackach, James. The Biblical Foundation of James Baldwin’s “Sonny’s Blues.” Renascence 59.2 (2007): 109-118. Print.
Tackach relates his belief that literary critics have ignored the Biblical foundation behind Sonny’s Blues. He discusses how Baldwin’s past as a minister and reading of the Bible, teaching him the legendary stories and rhetoric which would show their influence in his future writing. Specifically, he demonstrates how the Biblical stories of Cain and Abel and the Prodigal Son are foundations for Sonny’s Blues.
