Sonny's Blues

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29 July 2010

The Relationship between Art and Suffering in James Baldwin 's Sonny 's Blues

James Baldwin 's short story , Sonny 's Blues ' tells of the struggle of Sonny to overcome the oppression of poverty and hardship to obtain his own American dream in jazz music as well as the failure of life to live up to this dream . Told from the point-of-view of Sonny 's older brother the story begins with the knowledge of Sonny 's heroin related arrest

and bottoming-out . Coming back to Harlem to live with his brother after months of rehabilitation , Sonny is confronted by the same emotional and artistic restraints and temptations that led to his previous down-fall Attempting to explain his personal fall into addiction , Sonny relates the connections between his drug use , the hopelessness that permeates black life in Harlem , and the desire to tap into himself to find the musical notes that hum below the surface of his being . Having fallen prey to the hopelessness of life for an African American man living on the margins of society in the mid-20th century and to his own need to tap into the artistic reservoir of feeling that is at the heart of his particular artistic expression , Sonny stumbles only to regain himself and his life in the music itself

The return of Sonny to the housing projects in Harlem is tentatively hopeful . Too much and too little history exists between the brothers Having...