This piece is so beautifully written and evokes many different emotions in about thirty pages. When I first started reading this story, I thought it was going to be about a man mourning someone close to him. The way the piece begins you almost do not want to know what happened to Sonny. You know he is close to the narrator and at first I thought Sonny might have been a student of the narrator before finding out he is his brother. As the story progresses I begin to feel this is a story about the loss of innocence, childhood, and the sense of possibility felt when being young. When the narrator is sitting in his classroom and hears the children laughing around him he feels resentful. The students are carefree and the responsibilities of being an adult have not been experienced by them. Juxtaposing the students' laughter are the feelings of the narrator. They are young and carefree, while he is experiencing emotional turmoil due to his brother's arrest. The passage below invokes these feelings.
I listened to the boys outside, downstairs, shouting and cursing and laughing. Their laughter struck me for perhaps the first time. It was not the joyous laughter which-God knows why-one associates with children. It was mocking and insular, its intent was to denigrate. It was disenchanted, and in this, also, lay the authority of their curses. Perhaps I was listening to them because I was thinking about my brother and in them I heard my brother. And myself. (76)
Baldwin utilizes the theme of light versus darkness heavily in this story, and is eloquently used to represent the impending loss of youth before the reality of adulthood descends. A beautiful part of the story is when the children are sitting with the elderly after church. He says, "Everyone is looking at something a child can't see." (83) The narrator is referring to the darkness outside the window the adults are well familiar with. The adults know the darkness will always be there. The children are
frightened of the darkness and close their eyes to it. As long as
they feel the presence of the adult there with them there is this
sense of comfort, but the child knows this comfort will not be present forever. The narrator says, "But something deep and watchful in the child knows that this is bound to end, is already ending. In a moment someone will get up and turn on the light." (83)
Words Cited:
Baldwin, James. "Sonny's Blues." The Norton Introduction to Literature. 10th. Alison Booth, Kelly Mays. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2011. 75-101. Print.
Photo: http://kaganof.com/kagablog/2010/08/15/james-baldwin-sonnys-blues-extract/
Words Cited:
Baldwin, James. "Sonny's Blues." The Norton Introduction to Literature. 10th. Alison Booth, Kelly Mays. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2011. 75-101. Print.
Photo: http://kaganof.com/kagablog/2010/08/15/james-baldwin-sonnys-blues-extract/
It is interesting that the idea of darkness pops up in this story. It reminds me of Joseph Conrad's "Heart of Darkness". The idea of darkness itself can symbolize evil or even have a very mysterious definition (in other words one that cannot be defined in straight terms). I think the brother's main issue is, like you said, having to deal with Sonney the way his mother wanted him to. When I thought of Harlem I pictured this huge ruined street covered in darkness. I think it is all 1950s Harlem.
ReplyDeleteI liked your way of looking at the story, where you said you felt it was about the loss of innocence and the responsibilities that go along with growing older. In my post I looked at it as the brother trying to connect with Sonny on a deeper level, even though they were both very different. All this is in the story, but I guess that's why Dr. Hobby has us reading and responding to other people's posts, so we can see all the different sides someone may take on one story.
ReplyDeleteI agree to an extent with your analysis. Speaking of loss of innocence hard in a situation such as the characters are placed in. They grew up around drugs and had to deal with the harsh realities of life very young. They knew of the troubles certain lifestyles bring, and thus their choices were, I feel, less of a loss of innocence and of facing the realities of lifestyle choices. I do agree though that there are strong terms of light and dark, but I think Baldwin did a masterful job in displaying a lot of dark in the stereotypical light and a little light in what should normally be the dark. I was not a huge fan of the story, but I enjoyed what emotions the story attempted to evoke in me.
ReplyDelete