“Sonny’s Blues” by James Baldwin is a short story about two brothers helping each other through life. Sonny is the narrator’s younger brother. Sonny wanted to be a musician and, in the process, got hooked on heroin. Looking at this short story through a formalist lens one can see how Baldwin uses multiple different symbols in order to show the overall theme of “Sonny’s Blues”, which is suffering. Suffering can be seen within both the narrator and Sonny. Using the light, darkness, and music, Baldwin highlights the theme of suffering in a very realistic way throughout this short story.
Baldwin uses light as a symbol throughout the story, describing all the good and pure things in life. The first time that lightness is used is when the narrator is describing Sonny’s face as a child, “When he was about as old as the boys in my classes his face has been bright and open, there was a lot of copper in it” (27). Although this is not using the exact word “light”, bright still resembles lightness. In this quote, the narrator is remembering Sonny when he was a child. In this memory Sonny’s face is bright and open. The brightness in his face is meant to resemble the good in him along with his innocence as a child. The openness in his face symbolizes his future which is open to any possibilities. Although he is young and light, as a child, in his future the light goes away once he begins his use of heroin.
Light is used as a symbol again to describe Sonny. The narrator imagines Sonny’s face after he has been using heroin, “I didn’t want to believe that I’d ever see my brother going down, coming to nothing, all that light in his face gone out, in the condition I’d already seen so many others” (27). Unlike the first use of light this is Baldwin using the absence of light as a symbol. The light in Sonny’s face has gone out which symbolizes the fading of his innocence now that he is hooked on drugs. The narrator is not only talking about Sonny but also about others who have fallen to drug addictions.Clark says in a journal, “Sonny is a person who finds his life a living hell, but he knows enough to strive for the “light”. As it is chronicled in this story, his quest is for regaining something from his past—from his own childhood and from the pasts of all who have come before him” (30). This is showing that even though his light has faded, he still is striving to go back to his childhood self where he is innocence and not suffering. Baldwin’s use of absence of light helps support the theme of suffering in “Sonny’s Blues”. While children start out light and innocent, there is no guarantee they will stay that way. Instead the suffering of the world can cause suffering within, resulting in that light fading.
The use of darkness as a symbol is used more often than the use of light. Baldwin uses darkness as a symbol to represent the bad parts of life and suffering. The most dramatic example of the use of darkness is when the narrator is describing children sitting along with their parents, “The silence, the darkness coming, and the darkness in the faces frightens the child obscurely. He hopes that the hand which strokes his forehead will never stop—will never die” (35). In this quote Baldwin is using the children’s point of view to show the darkness that is surrounding them. This scene is showing the contrast between children and the adults. The adults know what darkness lies in the world, but the young and innocent child does not. The children can see the darkness in the parents faces and it scares them to see it. They are hoping that they will never have to experience the darkness that their parents have and that the easy and innocent days of being a child will never end. Later in this same scene the children’s thoughts continue, “And when light fills the room, the child is filled with darkness. He knows that every time this happens, he’s moved just a little closer to that darkness outside. The darkness outside is what the old folks have been talking about” (35). At this point the child seems to know that they are doomed to darkness. The contrast between light and darkness in this quote is very apparent. Although the room is light, the child is dark. This normally would seem like an odd account because children are typically portrayed as light and pure. But Baldwin is giving a more realistic statement which is every day the children are growing up and therefore they are in the inescapable trap of falling into darkness. This scene of the children acknowledging the darkness around them is supporting the fact that everyone will suffer at one point in their life. Even the children are stuck in the suffering of the world where they will lose their innocence and darkness will creep in.
The last time darkness is used as a symbol is when the narrator is listening to Sonny play the piano, “For, while the tale of how we suffer, and how we are delighted, and how we may triumph is never new, it always must be heard. There isn’t any other tale to tell, it’s the only light we’ve got in all this darkness” (48). Once again Baldwin is using darkness to symbolize all of the bad in the world. Not only is this quote using darkness as a symbol, but it is using light as well. The narrator is saying that everybody’s story has suffering in it. But he is also saying that people still need to live their lives because darkness is everywhere but the only light in the world is the people’s lives and stories. This applies to the theme of suffering because the narrator is coming to terms with the fact that both him and Sonny have suffered but in that there will always be light.
Baldwin uses music to has a symbol for Sonny’s emotions throughout “Sonny’s Blues”. When Sonny was living with Isabel as teenager she described how often Sonny would play on his piano, “Neither did they dare to make a great scene about the piano because even they dimly sensed, as I sensed, from so many thousands of miles away, that Sonny was at that piano playing for his life” (40). At this point the narrator is having the sense that the music was so much more than just music to Sonny. Instead his music was his lifeline keeping him out of trouble. Music is not just something that is keeping Sonny grounded but it is also an emotional release for him. In this quote Baldwin is using music to show the readers the struggles that Sonny was going through at this time in his life and showing that music was Sonny’s emotional release in that.
Baldwin did not only use music as a symbol for emotion but also as a symbol of freedom. Another example of music as a symbol is when the narrator listened to Sonny play the piano, “Freedom lurked around us and I understood, at last, that he could help us to be free if we were to listen, that he would never be free until we did” (49). This is when the narrator finally understands Sonny and his love for music. As he is watching his brother, he feels freedom surrounded everybody. This freedom is stemming from the music and the weightlessness of music itself. When listening to the music the narrator is somehow forgetting all that he has suffered and more importantly all that Sonny has suffered. He is also saying that Sonny would not be free until people listened to his music. Goldman talks about this moment as well, “Sonny’s music stirs special memories in the brother’s lives, but these blues belong to all of us, for they symbolize the darkness which surrounds all those who fail to listen and remain unheard by their fellow men” (233). This is not just meaning that people need to listen to Sonny’s music, but that they also need to understand his music and what it is trying to say. When knowing what his music is saying one can also hear what Sonny is saying. Music is Sonny’s outlet from the suffering and the main backbone to this story.
Suffering is the overall theme of “Sonny’s Blues”. Although most of the suffering that the reader sees are Sonny’s the narrator also describes that he has suffered as well. The main example of the narrator suffering is when his little girl died, “Little Grace died in the fall. She was a beautiful little girl. But she only lived a little over two years. She died of polio and she suffered” (41). This is the narrator describing his daughter’s death. Losing a daughter had to have been a difficult time for the narrator. Baldwin uses the word “suffered” when describing the girl’s death. This is an interesting word choice because without it the reader would mainly focus on the suffering of the narrator but instead it draws the attention to the girl’s suffering. This word choice makes this incident very realistic. Instead of the daughter’s death being romanticized Baldwin chose to let the reader see that the death was traumatic for both the father and the daughter. This decision helps support the theme of suffering because the reader is seeing how everyone does suffer in a very realistic lens.
Another time that suffering is brought up in the narrator’s life is a lot different than the first time. This time suffering is depicted in a new sense where it is not as traumatic. The narrator is thinking to himself as he is listening to Sonny play the piano, “I saw my little girl again and felt Isabel’s tears again, and I felt my own tears begin to rise. And I was yet aware that this was only a moment, that the world waited outside, as hungry as a tiger, and that trouble stretched above us, longer than the sky” (49). During this scene it seems as though the narrator is crying because the music is stirring all of these memories to mind. This moment that he is listening to his brother is somehow making his bad memory of his daughter dyeing not as sad. The reasoning for this is because he is so happy seeing his brother do good that the suffering is going away. Although the suffering is going away the narrator knows that the world is still harsh and that there is still darkness outside ready to cause more suffering. Once again this is a very realistic example of life that Baldwin gives the reader. He is showing the reader that happiness can ease suffering, but it will not take it away forever.
Sonny seems to suffer the most in “Sonny’s Blues”. Sonny struggles with drugs and mentions multiple times the fact that he is unhappy with his life. One prime example of this is in Sonny’s letter replying to the narrator, “I tell you one thing, though, I’d rather blow my brains out than go through this again” (31). It seems as though this was one of Sonny’s hardest times of his life because he is practically saying he would rather be dead than to go through what he is experiencing in this moment. Sonny is talking about his drug addiction and his struggle to get off the drugs. He also seems to feel guilty for getting himself into this situation and is reaching out to the narrator.
Sonny has gone through a lot of suffering in his life. At one-point Sonny tells the narrator his views on suffering, “No, there’s no way not to suffer. But you try all kinds of ways to keep from drowning in it, to keep on top of it, and make it seem—well like you” (44). Sonny believes that everybody suffers at one point, but he also believes that there are ways to stay afloat within that suffering. In Sonny’s case he used both drugs and music to deal with his suffering. For Sonny using drugs in the long run only caused him more suffering but his music overall helped pull him through. This is another example of Baldwin using realism to help show how people suffer. The way he put this makes the reader be able to relate with Sonny because most everybody has experienced suffering and has somehow tried to dull the pain one way or another.
While reading “Sonny’s Blue” the reader can see the immense suffering that these characters go through on a day-to-day basis while also relating to the realism of this story. Baldwin’s different uses of light, darkness, and music as symbols makes this story complex and gives it multiple possible interpretations.
Work Cited
Baldwin, James. “Sonny’s Blues.” The Art of the Short Story. Edited by Dana Gioia and R.S
Gwynn. Pearson Longman, 2006, pp. 27- 49.
Clark, Michael C. "James Baldwin's Sonny's Blues: Childhood, Light, and Art." Contemporary
Literary Criticism, vol. 90, no. 2, 1985. https://link-gale-com
Goldman, Suzy Bernstein. “James Baldwin's ‘Sonny's Blues’: A Message in Music.” Negro
American Literature Forum, vol. 8, no. 3, 1974, pp. 231–233. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/3041461.
