Sonny's Blues By James Baldwin

“Sonny’s Blue’s” by James Baldwin includes a descriptive and heart wrenching narration that grips towards finding oneself in a passion that accelerates life. The narrator of this short story is never identified through name, but his voice is all the fuel this passage needs to grip onto the fleeting and forceful emotion that is being transcribes to the audience and continues to hold a powerful force of intense passion as it nears to the end. The interplay between the darkness of reality, along with the gleaming hope that accompanies the characters within the language. There is a great sense of personal development for the narrator in this passage, not only though his own inclusion of language, but in the form of symbolism as well. In “Sonny’s

He uses word choice and a lyrical sentence structure to deliver the overall analogy of rhythm and melody within music; this being how vital music and the capturing tune that accompany it transforms the overall meaning for the narrator, as it has for Sonny as he performs in front of his brother. Within the quote, “And the face I saw on Sonny I’d never seen before. Everything had been burned out of it, and, at the same time, things usually hidden were being burned in, by the fire and fury of the battle which was occurring in him up there.” (Baldwin, 383). This acts as a metaphor as to how jazz and blues music are incorporated in Sonny’s life, and the narrator himself eventually comes to the realization that his brother eventually comes alive when it comes to music—the perfect description towards Sonny’s battle with the art and addiction within his life. Metaphor inclusions allowed the narrator to enhance the overall mood that is attempting to be portrayed through the atmosphere. Within this passage, the emotion is based towards empathy for his younger brother, and the anguish that Sonny is showing as he initially begins to play and how unsure he is as he begins to

This is told through the narrator’s own perspective as he watches the scene play out, “I had never before thought of how awful the relationship must be between the musician and his instrument. He has to fill it, this instrument, with the breath of life, his own. He has to make it do what he wants it to do. And a piano is just a piano.” (Baldwin 383). Sonny initially struggles with getting a grasp on the instrument he loves entirely as he does not divulge himself in the music as he once did. This offers a brief insight towards the theme of the constant cycle of suffering Sonny faces. Sonny comes face to face with something he holds dear, yet he cannot seem to give the instrument the ‘breath of life’ he desires to find as he is overwhelmed with the concept that relieves him from the hardship in his life. The audience can witness that Sonny begins to find his passion and rhythm again though the inclusion of personification. Musical instruments are brought to life within this passage and given human traits of confusion as seen in the piano, “He and the piano stammered, started one way, got scared, stopped; started another way, panicked, marked time, started again; then seemed to have found a direction, panicked again, got stuck. (Baldwin, 383). The narrator portrays the