Question

What do you know about the narrator in James Baldwin Sonny's Blues?

Answer 1

                      THE NARRATOR IN JAMES BALDWIN SONNY’S BLUE

The Narrator

           The first-person narrator of “Sonny’s Blues” is a high school math teacher in Harlem. As the story begins, he has to decide how to handle his brother Sonny’s trouble with addiction. The narrator is acutely aware of the drugs, violence, and lack of opportunity that pervade his neighbourhood, and he has spent his whole life fighting to avoid meeting the fate of those around him. He has a good job, he’s married with children, and he seems devoted to living an orderly and upstanding life—a devotion that has paradoxically served to make him bitter and obsessed with the very suffering he’s trying to avoid. The narrator has a complex relationship to family. While he has crafted a traditional and loving family for himself, his relationship to his brother Sonny is fraught, and he feels guilty that he has watched Sonny suffer without intervening, as he promised his late mother that he would. Over the course of the story, as the narrator is forced to grapple more with the suffering of others, his relationship to Sonny improves and he becomes a warmer and more compassionate character.

The narrator of “Sonny’s Blues” provides insight not only into Sonny and their life together but also into their environment. Although the story invokes Sonny in its title, it is through the narrator’s eyes that Sonny and Harlem are revealed. Compared to most of the men in his community, the narrator has succeeded: he has a wife, two children, and a good job as a teacher. However, he is constantly aware of Harlem’s darker, more dangerous side. He notes the open drug dealing that happens in the playgrounds near the housing projects, the disappearance of old homes, and, of course, his brother’s ongoing battle with the world. Far from worrying solely about his family’s difficulties, he frames Sonny’s struggles within a larger context, situating him within the poverty, crime, and drug abuse that plague the entire community.

Though the narrator is fully conscious of his community’s dark side, he tries his best to keep those problems at arm’s length, refusing to let any tragedy affect him too much emotionally. Unlike Sonny, the narrator has a difficult time expressing his ideas and emotions, and only when his young daughter dies do, he open up and write to his brother. The narrator believes that he has been called upon to watch over Sonny, but this knowledge doesn’t lessen the burden he feels. He is constantly torn by his emotions, which shift quickly from love to hate, concern to doubt. As much as he cares for Sonny, he seems to be unable to fully accept that his brother has the capacity for change.

"Sonny's Blues" is told in the first person from the point of view of an unnamed narrator who, we find out, is Sonny's brother. The narrator in this story is an interesting figure. He's mostly telling us Sonny's story, and this would seem to make him a peripheral character instead of a central one. But this is also his story. "Sonny's Blues" is not just about Sonny's decisions and struggles but also about how they affect the narrator. This story is as much about family and brotherhood and the relationship between these two men as it as about the single character of Sonny.

There are definite advantages to having a first-person central narrator who's telling both his story and Sonny's. Sonny would probably be an unreliable narrator of his own life story. The narrator can offer us a glimpse of both his own life and of Sonny's.

But there are also definite disadvantages (or complications) associated with a first-person narrator of this sort. We get the story through the filter of the narrator's own memories and biases. Since he is so emotionally involved, we should perhaps question how accurate his recollections are of the events in the story. And when we're dealing with something like drug addiction, we imagine it's very hard for someone to understand what it feels like (and then relay it to an audience) if he himself has never experienced it. So, there are perhaps some things we miss with this central narrator.

Initial Situation

The narrator reads in the newspaper about Sonny's arrest for using and selling heroin.

This discovery sets off the action in the rest of the story and causes the narrator to reflect on his and Sonny's pasts. Since Sonny's drug use is so central to the narrative, it's fitting that we (and the narrator) learn of this right off the bat.

Conflict

Sonny and the narrator have their first argument about Sonny wanting to become a jazz musician.

Although chronologically this takes place before the initial situation in the story, we don't read about it until after the fact. This is the primary conflict between Sonny and the narrator (at least at first). Sonny wants to be a jazz piano player, but the narrator thinks this is a waste of his life. Their inability to see eye to eye on this is what causes so much strife between the brothers.

Complication

Sonny moves into the narrator's apartment.

Although this may seem like a resolution, Sonny and the narrator are both forced to face some difficult things about themselves and about their relationship with each other when they're living under the same roof. The narrator also has access to Sonny's things because his room is right there, so he finds himself struggling over whether or not to trust Sonny, whether or not he should search his room, and whether or not Sonny has recovered.

Climax

Sonny and the narrator argue in the apartment.

This is where it all comes out: the narrator's anger at Sonny's drug use, Sonny's anger at feeling abandoned, the narrator's inability to understand Sonny as a musician, and Sonny's frustration at all this. This is their big, loud, brutally honest argument. And this is also when Sonny invites his brother to come hear him play, which may or may not provide some resolution for them and for the story.

Suspense

The moment just before Sonny starts to play the piano.

Sonny is nervous, the narrator is nervous, the other musicians seem unsure, and the audience doesn't know what to expect. Only Creole seems confident that everything will be OK once Sonny starts playing.

Denouement

Sonny makes it through the first set and starts playing the second.

Sonny starts to calm down and to feel more sure of himself. He starts to sound like himself again, too. He finally let’s go and loses himself in his music once again.

Sonny

From a young age, Sonny is haunted by the burden of being poor, black, and trapped within the confines of his community. As a young African American male born in Harlem, he is aware of the limits and obstacles he faces. He struggles to defy the stereotypes by moving away from Harlem and beginning a career as a musician. Unlike his brother, Sonny wants and needs an escape from Harlem and the traditional social order. Instead of being free, however, Sonny winds up being confined in prison—far from feeling trapped in his community, he is now literally captive. Even after Sonny is released from prison, the narrator describes him as a caged animal that is trying to break free from the effects that prison has had on him and from the drug addiction that led to his incarceration.

Sonny’s one saving grace is his music, through which he can express all of his deep-seated longing and frustration. Sonny’s music offers him a chance at redemption, but at the same time it also threatens to destroy him. To create music, Sonny has to bear the suffering and tragedies of his life and all the lives around him. He translates that suffering into an artistic expression that ultimately, even if only temporarily, redeems his audience. There is something heroic, almost Christlike, to the way Sonny offers himself up to his music. He knows that playing music may destroy him by leading him back into a life of drugs, but he also knows that it’s a burden that he has to bear.

Mother

The mother in “Sonny’s Blues” is an almost saint like figure who guards and protects her children and husband from the darkness of the world, and Baldwin’s biblical imagery and undertones come through clearly in her character. She shepherds her husband through the overwhelming grief that follows his brother’s death, thereby living up to the biblical challenge to be “your brother’s keeper.” She has done more than just live a decent life: she helped bear her husband’s tragedy as her own. Just as Jesus is often depicted as a shepherd, so too is the narrator’s mother, whose presence makes her husband’s life manageable. Her life story is a direct challenge to the narrator, who, unlike his mother, initially fails to care for his brother as he should.

In addition to her compassion, the mother also has a prophetic role to play in the narrative. She can see her own impending death and the dangers her youngest son will face. As a mother, she has protected her family, but now that she knows she is going to die, she knows she will no longer be able to guide and protect her family as she once did. Her foreshadowing of her death signals a shift in the narrator’s relationship with his brother. It makes him the new protector of Sonny against the greater darkness of the world that has always threatened to invade their lives.

Conclusion

The narrator sends Sonny a drink

This drink is the narrator's way of saying that he finally gets it – how important music is to Sonny, how necessary to his life. He finally understands what the other people in the club seem to already know about Sonny, and the implication is that the two men will finally find some peace in their relationship.

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