Sunny's Blues by James baldwin

Introduction

The world that we live in is a dangerous and dark place. There is no area that is immune to pain in suffering, but there are ways to deal with the pain and try to see the finer points in life. Music is one of those ways. In James Baldwin's short story "Sonny's Blues", music serves as a momentary exodus from the shadowy world of the Harlem streets.

Discussion

At the narrator's school, the boy is whistling a tune while his peers are engrossed in evoking the evils of society. The sharp, clear sound his whistle emits is the only pure sound in the vicinity; it is the only light in the darkness: "One boy was whistling a tune, at once very complicated and very simple, it seemed to be pouring out of him as though he were a bird, and it sounded very cool and moving through that harsh, bright air, only holding its own through all those other sounds." (Page 2)

"We were in front of a bar and he ducked slightly, peering in, but whoever he was looking for didn't seem to be there. The jukebox was blasting away with something black and bouncy and I half watched the barmaid as she danced her way from the jukebox to her place behind the bar. And I watched her face as she laughingly responded to something someone said to her, still keeping time to the music. When she smiled one saw the little girl, one sensed the doomed, still-struggling woman beneath the battered face of the semi-whore. ... The music stopped, the barmaid paused and watched the jukebox until the music began again." The woman mentioned in this passage leads a depressing life. She's a scruffy barmaid whose only escape from the harsh reality of life is the notes and voices reverberating from an ancient juke-box. It's her life-line. When the music stops, the woman stops dancing; she is yanked back into the present. But once the refrain begins again, she allows herself to fall back into the safety of its comfort.

The parents of all the children sat around the crowded room, waiting wearily for the darkness to overpower their defenses and drown them in a sea of despair. "There they sit, in chairs all around the living room, and yet the night is creeping up outside, but nobody knows it yet. You can see the darkness growing against the windowpanes and you hear the street noises every now and again, or maybe the jangling beat of a tambourine from one of the churches close by, but it's real quiet in the room." (Page 11) The sound of the tambourine symbolizes freedom. Although the sound is far away, it is still there. To reach it, however, the families will have to force their way through the darkness. James Baldwin incorporated this passage into his story to give black families hope that, if they continued to work hard and persevere, they would someday find the good ...