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Sonny's Blues Character Analysis

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The story Sonny’s Blues by James Baldwin (1957) explores the theme of suffering experienced by Black Americans as individuals fettered by discrimination, unemployment, housing problems, drug addiction, imprisonment and suicide. It features the struggle of two brothers separated and caught in the entanglements of time, space and ideals. The unnamed Narrator who is relatively well-off between the two siblings struggles to understand his suicidal yet talented brother Sonny while the latter finds difficulty in coping up with the mediocrity that engulfs him. Effective communication is crucial in the story of two brothers with different visions in life where rage and fury may explode at split seconds to put an end to one dear life of a prodigy. …show more content…
Of course, his rebellious action then gravely hurt Isabel, her folks and most importantly, his brother not out of humiliation but of frustration in understanding his thoughts, attitudes and character. For Sonny, music was his way of expression, communication and redemption. In the past, his brother thought it was something not serious and which does not promise a good living. Sonny was consistent with such dream while his main frustration then in Harlem was “to get away from drugs”. He was caught in this self-destructing world though many times he thought “I needed a fix, I needed a place to lean, I needed a clear space to listen… and I couldn’t find …show more content…
The Narrator is happy in both his career and relationship with a teaching position, a wife and children. However, he is haunted by his seeming failure in taking his brother out of trouble. Meanwhile, Sonny is unable to articulate his hatred and love of his family and the society at large in a way that his brother would easily understand. The interesting resolution in the end of the story is weaved by a touch of musical education and appreciation: how feelings are manifested in music and why good music is born. This documents how repressed feelings of marginalized sectors are translated in music and song. Albert sees such music particularly blues as “a state of being and as music” that is the bone of the story. This reminds us of the historicity and wealth of Black music and artistry that even White Americans later would hail and emulate. Listening is a simple skill yet a hard one for humans. It entails the discipline of valuing others and paying deeper attention to other’s feelings, thoughts and opinions. Individuals may have tendency to be egocentric that sometimes they are not aware that they have not been listening or are not listening enough to others. Instead, they are more drowned in their own pathetic world. This leads to miscommunication and misunderstanding as well as petty quarrels to suicidal acts that may have been prevented in the first

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