Sonny's Blues
In James Baldwin's short story, "Sonny's Blues," the narrator attempts to understand the life of his brother Sonny. Set in post-Korean War Harlem, "Sonny's Blues" places emphasis on the African-American community's struggle economically and socially to become successful. This struggle can also become anyone's battle and not just that of the African-American living in the ghetto. In Sonny's case, he tries to overcome his heroin addiction, a symptom of the lack of opportunities the ghetto offers, with music as he plays blues and jazz on piano. Thus, in Baldwin's story the importance of creativity as a means of expression and of escaping reality is demonstrated through Sonny. Creativity can be used to express the history of one's life and culture. Thorell Tsomondo suggests, "the artist historian is a kind of poet-prophet . . . bound at once to tradition and to change" (195). Sonny's story contains broken dreams and monumental anguish, which may have caused or perhaps were the result of his heroin addiction. In playing the piano, Sonny becomes a storyteller, and he tells about the struggle he and his audience daily experience: the realities of poverty, crime, and oppression. Even as he recreates the tale of his life, he must crea
Sonny "lead[s] his audience to a heightened, shared awareness of their cultural identity" when he gives his "heroic, bardic performance" with Creole and the band (Thorell 196). Machinery devours him by forcing him to devour its own excesses: it is only a short time later that Charlie is, as has been noted, himself devoured by the machine age in the geary maw of a huge construction device (ibid). When brought in for Charlie's slave-driving boss to inspect in the film's opening minutes, a machine meant to feed workers while leaving their hands free announces its functions by an associated LP record. This entanglement of emotion is a powerful and volatile force to reckon with, and music helps to ease the artist and the audience into deep water and not drown. When we next see him in The Great Dictator, it is his last time on the screen: he has refined his ways such that he is no longer officially the Tramp (most texts I follow call the character the Barber, although identifying him as implicitly the same Charlie). Instead of fearing the roar inside, he brought it to life through creativity. Creativity becomes a means to escape the reality of repetition also, that of "houses exactly like the houses . a foundation for a collective morality, within which everything is redeemed" (1972: 59). [and] boys exactly like the boys" they come across again and again in Harlem (Baldwin 71). Creativity, then, becomes a kingdom of its own, a refuge for the broken and searching artist.
Common topics in this essay:
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Harlem Sonny,
Roland Barthes',
Thorell Tsomondo,
Harlem Baldwin,
Sonny's Blues,
Tracey Sherard,
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Wes Gehring,
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heroin addiction,
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eliminating lunch eliminating,
lunch eliminating lunch,
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Acceptance Essays
