Essay on "Brotherhood in Sonny's Blue by James Baldwin"

Essay 4 pages (1160 words) Sources: 1

[EXCERPT] . . . .

Brotherhood in Sonny's Blues

Brotherhood in Baldwin's "Sonny's Blues"

When Sonny's brother finds out in the newspaper that Sonny has been picked up for heroin, he says that Sonny "became real to me again" (Baldwin, 1).

The brothers are distant, lost to one another. When the two brothers finally meet, the older can only think awkwardly to bring up an old desire of Sonny's to go to India (6). This illustrates the ambivalence and alienation of the siblings. From here, Baldwin's "Sonny's Blues" takes the reader on a tour of their conflict -- the setting it is played out in, the characters they have internalized, and the imagery that defines their separation. These narrative elements, like clues, key the reader into the sibling struggle, their misunderstandings of each other, and their different approaches to pain. This essay aims to show how the author has used story setting, characterization, and symbolic imagery to make the point that brotherly love can prevail over tragic suffering and the conflict this suffering creates.

The backdrop to the story is fueled by the image of darkness. There is suffering all around them, outside and inside them. Harlem is derelict, violent, and drug-riddled. Whorish barmaids, junkies, and dealers haunt the darkness. These are the "vivid killing streets of our childhood," Sonny's brother thinks from a taxi (7). The streets smother kids "encircled by disaster" (7). No one is safe (8). Sonny's brother is "trapped in the darkness which roared outside" (1). His students exist in "two darknesses," blind to light (2). They escape by shooting up, fleeing the rage caused by their limited possibilities in life. At night in the apartments, children are restless: "The silence, the darkness coming, and the darkness in the faces frighten the child obscurely" (9). When the lights are turned on, the child "moves just a little closer to the darkness outside" (9). Baldwin uses this imagery of darkness to convey the sense of trouble in the story's environment. This setting creates the stage for the brother's conflict.

Sonny's brother is the rational one. He feels this darkness as ice in his veins (1). Ice is his symbol for dread. It is the symbol of his fear of drugs and their consequences. Unlike Sonny, he never goes down that road into drugs or music. But he feels the ice sometimes, especially when he thinks of Sonny. Ice is the sickness that heroin is (4). Its symbolic coldness is a reflection of the hidden menace on Harlem streets (7). It is the feeling Sonny's brother gets when he knows that his brother is unsafe because of drugs (8). Sonny's brother wants to escape it, to repress it, and he does through success and safety. He becomes an algebra teacher who finished school and has a family. He has kept himself out of drugs and "escaped" the trap this way (7). He is afraid to experience heroin, which "filled everything, the people, the houses, the music, the dark quicksilver barmaid, with menace" (3). He links drugs with music, and rejects both. This is part of the sibling conflict. Yet his mother has burned fear and responsibility into his heart. She tells him about his father's brother -- a musician like Sonny, run down by whites. She uses this story to instill in him the sense of responsibility for his brother. He promises to hold onto his brother and not let him fall (11). But he fails. He loses Sonny because his reaction to… READ MORE

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