Author James Baldwin’s short story, Sonny’s Blues, takes place between 1924 - 1987 Harlem, New York, and society’s assumptions towards the black community and moral values during this time period were very skewed. Baldwin demonstrates this through the main characters, Sonny and the unnamed narrator, and their alienation from society because of their class and their alienation from themselves because of creed. These things have formed a metaphorical prison around them.
In the 1900s Harlem, blacks were often in the middle or lower class, and Sonny and the narrator were no exception. The narrator was in the middle class as he had a stable job, a wife, kids, and a home. At the same time the narrator describes his home as if it’s in a state of decay, saying, “We live in a housing project. It hasn’t been up long. A few days after it was up it seemed uninhabitably new, now, of course, it’s already run down.” Baldwin’s point is that people assume that being in the middle class means that you have a nice house, but the narrator is in the middle class and he lives in a dingy housing project that would seem like it’s more for the lower class. Sonny, on the other hand, was in the lower class as he
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He shines a light on how society has forced us to think that we must have unconditional love for our families and if you are the eldest sibling in a family, you are expected to be more responsible and be a role model. Baldwin shows us that this isn’t always how it is. This is something that the readers can relate to and through the story and characters we can learn something about ourselves. In the same way, Baldwin uses class to show us that even though you are middle class, you can still suffer, and even though you are lower class, you can still succeed. Without the prospects of creed and class, the story would not have the same relatable factors and