The Struggle In Sonny's Blues By James Baldwin

Nelson Mandela, the first black president of South Africa and a Civil Rights Activist, stated “As long as poverty, injustice and gross inequality persist in our world, none of us can truly rest” (www.brainyquote.com). James Baldwin, a leading literary spokesman for civil rights and racial equality, crafted many literary works, which includes his short story “Sonny’s Blues”. The story focuses on the narrator’s struggle to accept his brother’s way of life and desire to be a Jazz pianist. Similarly to the character in “Sonny’s Blues”, Baldwin also faced adversity and personal struggles that helped shape his life. Throughout the story, “Sonny’s Blues”, the reader uncovers the theme of man versus environment, man versus self, as well as alienation,

Near the beginning of the story, along with flashbacks of the narrator, the reader learns about the Harlem neighborhood in which the narrator and his brother were raised. The unnamed narrator characterizes the individuals on the street as being populated with individuals suffering from poverty, prostitutes, and drug addicts. The narrator felt guilty for returning his ex-heroin addicted brother “back into the danger he had almost died trying to escape” (76). Elise Miller, a Ph.D. and professor, transcribes in her journal about James Baldwin a parallel that connects the use of drugs in “Sonny’s Blues” as well as in James Baldwin early childhood. Miller suggests in her journal, “[Baldwin’s] concerns about being contingent or derivative give rise to a number of psychological and literary innovations”, due to his use of a negative environment (Miller

The battle between man and self is found primarily in the life of the narrator’s brother as he explains that his use of heroin and his interest in Jazz is his way of escape from himself. In the story, Sonny explains to his brother, the unnamed narrator, how the music and heroin makes him feel. Sonny explained, “her voice reminded me for a minute of what heroin feels like sometimes – when it's in your veins. It makes you feel sort of warm and cool at the same time” (195). To the reader, Sonny’s use of heroin as an escape seems insufficient sends it lands him jail. James Baldwin’s experience with man versus self-struggle is also prevalent in his career, just like Sonny’s and his music career. As a young man, James Baldwin struggled with his sexual orientation of homosexuality. Once Baldwin’s mother remarried to a preacher, Baldwin was raised in a religious household, which influenced him greatly. As a result, his beliefs and ideas wavered greatly. Donald Murray, a Pulitzer prize-winning journalist, constitutes that in response, “images of light and darkness are used by Baldwin to illustrate his theme of a man’s painful quest for an identity” (Murray