Grace Exposed In Sonny's Blues By James Baldwin

“Sonny’s Blues” is a first person narrative written by James Baldwin, a former African American author. The story is focussed on many different concepts of life and the author's life clearly defines the reason to writing the story. Born in Harlem, the setting of “Sonny’s Blues,” James saw various forms of living as he grew. The author used his younger experiences and time with the church to create this significant writing. In “Sonny’s Blues,” the narrator, an unnamed character shown as an algebra teacher, and his brother, Sonny, grew apart when Sonny found a pull towards both music and heroin. After redeeming himself out of Jail, Sonny returns to his brother, which first occurred once the narrator's daughter, Grace. Subsequent a significant

The narrator listened and watched as Sonny’s struggles slide off from Sonny, and sends the cup of trembling. Baldwin’s “Sonny’s Blues” not only discusses the concept of grace with biblical representations, but also presents a dichotomy of light and dark throughout the lives of two brothers.
The concept of grace is disputed in many different forms throughout “Sonny’s Blues.” Cain and Abel, the cup of trembling, ‘The Fall’ in Genesis, and the Prodigal Son are all of the biblical approaches James chose to reside in the story to lead into grace. The approach of idea of the brother’s keeper is centered around the biblical Cain and Abel story. The brother’s keeper is emblematically defined as the older brother to watch over the younger one; to keep them on the safest path for their future. In the last conversation that the narrator had with his mother presents the narrator as Sonny’s keeper, of which he feels he had failed at doing in cause of the path Sonny had set himself on. Yet, like Cain and Abel, the older brother in “Sonny’s Blues” is the one in need to be saved while the younger one, Sonny, rescues him. Sonny’s life choices had always reflected onto the brother’s keeper, the narrator, and all of his choices created an unnecessary burden onto the

In his book, “Sonny’s Blues,” Baldwin maintains that "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" (147). In the story the narrator is introduced to Creole, Sonny’s band leader, who “stepped forward to remind them what they were playing was the blues” (147). Baldwin uses the quote the narrator used to explain Creoles remeding to explain his story of suffering and triumph, two major thematic words Baldwin repeatedly used in several other stories. “The only light we’ve got” is the understanding of Blues; redemption stories. Darkness and light alternatively shift throughout the story. Frequently the descriptions James Baldwin inserts within his story begin showing imagery of something positive such as when he describes the boys in his class; having the capacity to be good like the way Sonny once was. The narrator then switches to the present rage that the boys had and how “all they really knew were two darknesses, the darkness of their lives, which had blinded them to that other darkness, and in which they now vindictively, dreamed at once more together than they were at any other