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J AM E S B AL DW I N
“SONNY’S BLUES”
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The structure of the plot is informal, lacking a clear progression from conflict to
resolution, relying mainly on flashbacks that tell instead of show the narrator’s memories.
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This is a 1st-person narrator who remains unnamed & who is seven years older than his
younger brother. He is an algebra teacher & “straight” in terms of drug use.
40: The narrator also shows that he, while human, isn’t an inherently judgmental
person: “‘Look. Don’t tell me your sad story, if it was up to me, I’d give you one.’
Then I felt guilty – guilty, probably, for never having supposed that the poor
bastard had a story of his own, much less a sad one…”
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Imagery of Light & Darkness is seen many times throughout this story:
38: “swinging lights of the subway car.”
39: “shadow of a doorway.”
42: “Yet … the baby brother I’d never know looked out from the depths of his
private life, like an animal waiting to be coaxed into the light.”
45: The twilight after Sunday dinner.
47: “He says he never in his life seen anything as dark as that road after the lights
of that car had gone away.”
51: “…the way shadows play on a face which is staring into a fire.”
54: “The coppery sun brought out the copper in his skin…”
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58: “The light from the bandstand … were being most careful not to step into that
circle of light too suddenly: that if they moved into the light too suddenly, without
thinking, they would perish in flame.”
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40-41: What is Baldwin through the narrator doing with his comments about Sonny’s
childhood friend who, when he grins, reminds the narrator of “what he’d looked liked as
a kid” & the barmaid who, when she smiled, he “saw the little girl …the doomed, stillstruggling woman beneath the battered face of the semi-whore”?
45: It might help to examine a key memory the narrator relates about the
lethargy after a Sunday dinner, specifically: “The child knows that they
won’t talk any more [now that the lights have been flipped on] because if
he knows too much about what’s happened to them, he’ll know too much
too soon, about what’s going to happen to him.”
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41: Notice what the use of italics connotes – the different meanings the careful choice of
it conveys. What do the first & second italicized words in this exchange mean?
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46-47: In what ways does the story of the narrator & Sonny’s father’s murdered brother
function in the larger narrative?
That the narrator is his father, & that like his father, his attempts to save
his brother will be too little too late as something completely outside his
control runs him over.
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47-48: Does the narrator break his promise to his mother to “hold on to” Sonny? Two
paragraphs after he promise not to let anything happen to his brother, he says, “Two
days later I was married and then I was gone” to the war.
What does the narrator, at this point, not understand what his mother is
asking of him?
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53: Explain: “My trouble made his real.” He says this after writing Sonny the day his
daughter died.
Is there any significance to the name of his daughter, Grace – one
definition of which is having the protection of, &/or being sanctified by,
God?
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Are the narrator & Sonny religious men?
Does religion, or spirituality, have a role in this story, & if so, what?
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56: What is the fundamental difference in how the brothers view suffering as it relates to
the human condition, & how is this difference of opinion the key to understanding the
conflict between them?
See, especially, Sonny’s statement that “Maybe it’s better to do something
to give it a reason, any reason.”
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56: What is Sonny actually talking about when he says: “It’s terrible sometimes, inside
… that’s what’s the trouble. You walk these streets, black and funky and cold, and there’s
not really a living ass to talk to, and there’s nothing shaking, and there’s no way of
getting it out – that storm inside. You can’t talk it and you can’t make love with it, and
when you finally try to get with it and play it, you realize nobody’s listening. So you’ve
got to listen. You got to find a way to listen.”
One of the key points is being slipped in here, in these lines in a story
about music, & it’s this point that the narrator has to recognize before he
can begin to understand how is brother could have been where he’s been,
and been what he’s been (57).
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60: read from “Creole began to tell us what the blues were all about” until the end of the
paragraph. This description is about the music that’s being played in the club, of course,
but what else is the narrator describing, what other forms of creation is he describing?
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61: Why does the narrator order a Scotch & milk for Sonny? What does “For me, then, as
they began to play again, it glowed and shoot above my brother’s head like the very cup
of trembling” is a reference to Isaiah 51: 17-22, which, depending on your version of the
Bible, reads:
17 Awake, awake, stand up, O Jerusalem, which hast drunk at the hand of the
LORD the cup of his fury; thou hast drunken the dregs of the cup of trembling,
and wrung them out.
18 There is none to guide her among all the sons whom she hath brought forth;
neither is there any that taketh her by the hand of all the sons that she hath
brought up.
19 These two things are come unto thee; who shall be sorry for thee? desolation,
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and destruction, and the famine, and the sword: by whom shall I comfort thee?
20 Thy sons have fainted, they lie at the head of all the streets, as a wild bull in a
net: they are full of the fury of the LORD, the rebuke of thy God.
21 Therefore hear now this, thou afflicted, and drunken, but not with wine:
22 Thus saith thy Lord the LORD, and thy God that pleadeth the cause of his
people, Behold, I have taken out of thine hand the cup of trembling, even the
dregs of the cup of my fury; thou shalt no more drink it again:
23 But I will put it into the hand of them that afflict thee; which have said to thy
soul, Bow down, that we may go over: and thou hast laid thy body as the
ground, and as the street, to them that went over.
Basically, God is telling the Hebrews he will no longer “afflict” them, will no longer
make them bear his wrath, but rather he will do so upon their enemies.
So, how does this relate to “Sonny’s Blues”?