Words and Music: Narrative Ambiguity in “Sonny’s Blues” Essay Example

is the main setting throughout the story. “Sonny’s Blues” takes place during the mid-twentieth century, in or near the early 1950’s. Although he was intelligent and obedient both at home and in school, he has never accepted the way that his siblings were. As a result, his artistic works regularly contain comparable circumstances where one kid is favored over another. "Sonny's Blues" in some ways tails this desire where the anonymous storyteller discusses Sonny and his dad not getting along well, but rather expressed that he trusted "Sonny was his dad's absolute favorite" (Baldwin 118) and says that "he cherished Sonny so much and was unnerved for him" yet never talks about his association with his dad (Baldwin 17).

The Relationship Between Two Siblings Portrayed in the Short Story 'Sonny's Blues

The storyteller's mother, by blaming him for viewing over Sonny, is requesting that he serve as his sibling's guardian. The element between the two siblings echoes, to some degree, the relationship between the siblings Cain and Abel in the Bible. In that narrative, Cain, after killing Abel, asks whether he should be his sibling's attendant. The narrator, following after his mom's death, is given a comparable difficulty. Since their mom's death, Sonny's life has been defaced by jail and drug misuse (Reilly 34).

The extension between the two siblings is great to the point that after one specific battle, Sonny advises his sibling to think of him as dead starting there on, an announcement that, once more, intentionally echoes the biblical account of Cain and Abel. The two brothers, Sonny and the narrator, race through a series of strong affective states, each tripping on another’s heel: “icy

dread,” fear, despair, rage, and even some flashes of joy (Baldwin 113). Like Cain, the storyteller walks out on his sibling and falls flat, at to start with, to react to Sonny when he is jail. He has neglected to experience his mom's precept that he watches over his sibling however the disappointment is just makeshift. Before the end of the story, the narrator has taken Sonny again into his home. He at long last takes on the role of his sibling's manager, continually watching and stressing over Sonny as he rises out of the darkness of jail and drug misuse.

Nature and Relationship of Art and Language Studied in the Work

Arts play an essential role in "Sonny's Blues", acting as a bridge between the offended siblings. Sonny's inability to talk and the narrator’s inability to keep the brothers from genuinely speaking with or understanding each other throughout their lives. Music turns into a channel through which Sonny can make himself understood. Seeing the music of the street revival brings the siblings nearer, provoking their first honest discussion in the work. More remarkably, at the peak, Sonny's music helps the narrator, at last, comprehend his life and trials. The connection art encourages turns into the catalyst for an honest epiphany in the narrator. As one critic clarifies, "By comprehension Sonny's torment and tolerating his mankind, his brother comprehends and acknowledges himself" (Claborn 28). Art then functions as methods for correspondence, as well as at last for redemption. Baldwin's analysis about the significance of stories proposes that composition, similar to music and different types of art, serves this purpose.

Conflict

There are two noteworthy characters in "Sonny's Blues," Sonny

and Sonny's older brother. Each of these characters has an independent conflict, and together they share another conflict. Sonny's conflict has various parts: heroin addiction; the "vivid, killings streets;" his decision for jazz and blue music over classical, which means a choice for destitution and limits to opportunity and freedom and a rejection of a built up spot in the society with at least some monetary opportunity, such as his brother attained. His brother’s conflict is the thing he can do to help Sonny. He feels antagonized by the seven year age contrast that isolates him from Sonny. He feels like Sonny's decision of jazz and blues was a mistake and "beneath" him. He feels he failed his mother since she required a promise that as the older brother he would take care of Sonny...the trouble is, he has never known how to help Sonny (Lee 288). Their mutual clash is the means by which to extricate themselves from the suffering of their racially obstructed lives. Sonny has fallen more profound and more profound into affliction. His sibling has removed himself from the anguish in large part however not so much every still wears the shackles of the misery from their childhood and youth.

The narrator also had a conflict within himself as he narrates in the story, "This was conveying me some spot I would not like to go. I absolutely would not like to know how it felt. It filled everything, the general population, the houses, the music, the dim, mercury barmaid, with hazard; and this danger was their existence" (Baldwin 107).

Specialty of Music

In James Baldwin's "Sonny's Blues," music is the central focal point

of Sonny's life it is the primary concern that seems to release him from his distress: his impulse, growing up dim, feeling alone and cut off from others, and a slant that he has no one to love or appreciate him. "Flexibility hid around us, and I comprehended, finally, that he could help us to be free on the off chance that we would tune in, that he could never be free until we did"(Baldwin 176). Here the narrator elaborates how music normally frees him and perhaps Sonny.

It is not amazing that Baldwin gives Sonny's character the capacity to play jazz soul to manage better his misery, including the mindfulness that he and his sibling can't convey and accordingly have no association. '"I want to play with—jazz musicians.' He stopped. 'I want to play jazz"' (Baldwin 189).The trouble is that Sonny needs to make his living in a non-conventional manner, one that his sibling does not get it. The narrator knows nothing about jazz: he trusts it is men sitting and wasting time with the music. The storyteller can't see that it is quite a lot more to the genuine performer and to Sonny, who has music in his spirit (Hughes et al. 33). The narrator has been charged by his mom to watch over Sonny, yet he doesn't know how not in a way that will help Sonny. All I know about music is that not many people ever really hear it.

Conclusion

The art of music in Baldwin narrative is a key item of representing feeling, Sonny's Blues," then, does not just use narrative to advertise music as an inimitable means of expression and locus

of meaning, but demonstrates the symbiosis between words and music, the continuum between story and sound, narrative events and musical moments, and even between music and theory, music and thought. The form of the music echoes the back and forth form of the narrative and provides not just a soundtrack to, but a way of understanding (and connecting to) the psychological and sociological nuances that subtend it.

Work Cited

1. Baldwin, James. "A talk to teachers." Yearbook of the National Society for the Study of Education 107.2 (2008): 15-20.
2. Byerman, Keith E. "Words and Music: Narrative Ambiguity in" Sonny's Blues"." Studies in Short Fiction 19.4 (1982): 367.
3. Claborn, John. "WHO SET YOU FEELIN'? HARLEM, COMMUNAL AFFECT, AND THE GREAT MIGRATION NARRATIVE IN JAMES BALDWIN'S" SONNY'S BLUES"." ENGLISH LANGUAGE NOTES 48.1 (2010): 89-100.
4. Hughes, Langston, and Making Poetry Pay. "listening to What the ear Demands." The Muse is Music: Jazz Poetry from the Harlem Renaissance to Spoken Word (2011): 33.
5. Lee, Susanna. "The Jazz Harmonies of Connection and Disconnection in “Sonny's Blues”." Genre 37.2 (2004): 285-299.
6. Reilly, John M. "" Sonny's Blues": James Baldwin's Image of Black Community." Negro American Literature Forum. Vol. 4. No. 2. St. Louis University, 1970.