Sonny’s Blues:
Objectives
- Analyze the way in which the theme or meaning of a text represents a view or comment on life using textual evidence
- Analyze the ways in which irony, tone, mood, style, and language achieve specific aesthetic or rhetorical purposes, or both
- Evaluate the philosophical, political, religious, ethical, and social influences of the historical period that shaped the characters, plots, and settings. (Harlem Renaissance)
- Write responses to literature demonstrating a comprehensive understanding of the significant ideas in works or passages; analyzing the use of imagery, language, and universal themes; and supporting important ideas through accurate and detailed references to the text and to other works.
Introduction
Frequently anthologized, James Baldwin's "Sonny's Blues" tells the story of two brothers who come to understand each other. More specifically, it highlights, through its two main characters, the two sides of the African-American experience. The narrator has assimilated into white society as much as possible but still feels the pain of institutional racism and the limits placed upon his opportunity. Conversely, Sonny has never tried to assimilate and must find an outlet for the deep pain and suffering that his status as permanent outsider confers upon him. Sonny channels his suffering into music, especially bebop jazz and the blues, forms developed by African-American musicians. "Sonny's Blues" was first published in 1957 and was collected in Baldwin's 1965 book, Going to Meet the Man.
The story also has biblical implications. Baldwin became a street preacher early in his life, and religious themes appear throughout his writings. In "Sonny's Blues," Baldwin uses the image from the book of Isaiah of the "cup of trembling" to symbolize the suffering and trouble that Sonny has experienced in his life. At the end of the story, while Sonny is playing the piano, Sonny's brother watches a barmaid bring a glass of Scotch and milk to the piano, which "glowed and shook above my brother's head like the very cup of trembling." As Sonny plays, the cup reminds his brother of all of the suffering that both he and Sonny have endured. His brother finally understands that it is through music that Sonny is able to turn his suffering into something worthwhile.
Preview Questions
a. What do you know about jazz or blues music?
b. How are artists different from the rest of us?
c. What is the artist's function in society?
d. What do you know or suspect about the conditions of African American life during the 1940s and 50s?
Vocabulary
Renaissance
Transcendence
Epiphany
Allusion
Interpret
thesis
Analyze
Prose
Menace
Freighted
Malice
Furlough
Gravely
progression
conked
pursue
Chasm
Disenchanted
Lodestone
Sardonic
Immense
Lament
Cunning
Repulsive
Motifs to watch out for in sonny’s blues
Light/dark
Life/death
Self-realization/rebirth
Inside/outside
Judgment
Escape
Responsibility
Music
Alienation
God/ higher power
Youth/age
shadows
Growth
individuality
race and ethnicity
guilt
Questions for Understanding "Sonny's Blues"
1. What is meant by the word "blues" in the title? What are Sonny's blues?
2. What are the narrator's emotions when he reads the news about Sonny in the newspaper? How would you describe the relationship between these two brothers?
3. What is the narrator's occupation? How is his occupation significant vis-à-vis Sonny's story?
4. What event in the narrator's life acts as a catalyst to encourage him to contact Sonny in prison?
5. Why, according to the narrator, were Sonny and his father estranged from one another?
6. What does the narrator's mother believe to be his responsibility to Sonny?
7. What is the significance of the scene with the street singers?
8. Give two different explanations for why Sonny leaves Isabel's family's home while the narrator is in the military. (One explanation would be from Isabel's/narrator's perspective, the other from Sonny's).
9. What might be some reasons for why the narrator buys Sonny a drink at the end of the story?
Questions for Close Reading and Analysis of Fictional Elements
Part of "Jazz and Literature"
By Anne Fleischmann and Andy Jones
In a three to four page literary analysis essay, respond to one of the following essay questions. Your essay should include an introduction with a strong thesis statement, body paragraphs with clear topic sentences, ample textual support in the forms of quotations and summary, and logical analysis.
1. Carefully observe the details of the story's opening, how the narrator learns of his brother's downfall, where he is at the time, the interaction with Sonny's friend, etc. How do these scenes help set up the issues in the story?
2. How do events in the past, presented as flashbacks or as the narrator's recollections, help to develop the plot and characterization in "Sonny's Blues"? Consider the narrator's description of his and Sonny's childhood, their lives on the Harlem streets, the Sunday dinners at home, the death of their uncle, the narrator's last conversation with their mother, etc.
3.Toward the end of the story, as he is trying to explain his addiction to heroin and his passion for music, Sonny tells the narrator that everyone tries to find a way not to suffer, even the narrator himself. What are the narrator's ways of coping with his pain and fear?
4. How would you describe the tone of the ending? What sort of resolution (if any) does the story or the narrator come to? Does the narrator express optimism? Pessimism? Something in between?
5.Sonny's Blues is populated by images of darkness and light. Trace a series of these images and discuss how the narrator uses them to create a particular atmosphere and to help tell his story.
6. Aworks setting refers to both the time (historical and also time of day or year) and the place (geographical, as in New York, Harlem, Greenwich Village, and also local, as in setting certain scenes in subways, apartments, dark roads, etc.) in which the actions of the story occur. How do Baldwin's choices about setting help you understand the theme or meaning of the story.
7. Look at a map of Harlem. While speaking with Sonny's childhood friend, the Narrator says "You come all the way down here just to tell me about Sonny?" But Sonny has been arrested downtown and the narrator is uptown when he speaks with the friend. How do you explain this apparent error?
8. The word "it" populates the conversation between the narrator and the friend. What is the pronoun standing in for in these sentences? Where else does the narrator begin to rely on the pronoun "it" to help him make sense of Sonny's story? Why do you think Baldwin felt that the word "it" was better than its specific referent in these cases?
9. How do the minor characters in the story function to help develop the story, the characters of Sonny and his brother? (Isabel, Sonny's childhood friend, their parents, their uncle, the jazz musicians at the Village club).
10. Consider carefully the narrator's language in the climactic scene, when Sonny plays the piano. What elements of style can you identify here, and what is their effect? What is the nature of the epiphany the narrator experiences here, and how does it connect with episodes recounted earlier in the story -- e.g. the mother's story of the father and his brother?
11. What statement does the story make about the relationship of art to life or about the relationship of art to suffering?
12. Explore the implicit intersections between the effects of drug use, music and religion in Sonny's Blues.
Thesis Statements for Literary Analysis
What is a thesis statement? A thesis statement is the controlling idea of a paper. It expresses succinctly the idea that the body of the paper will prove. Other names for the thesis statement are "main idea," "controlling idea," and "thesis." If the paper is a literary analysis, as all of the papers you will write for your AP literature course will be, your thesis statement will make a debatable claim about one or more works of literature. Usually, thesis statements appear in the first paragraph of the paper.
Can any statement be a thesis statement? No. A thesis statement should be a fresh idea or opinion that is supportable based on facts or evidence taken from the story, poem or play discussed in the literary analysis. That is, a paper's thesis cannot be a restatement of fact or an unsupportable opinion. A thesis statement must also be interesting and not immediately obvious. It must elaborate an idea that most readers would find new and refreshing, rather than unduly familiar or self-evident. A thesis statement often suggests a particular way of reading or understanding a story, an interpretation that the average reader wouldn't see right away. The best thesis statements are specific rather than general.
What would be an example of an excellent thesis statement? Look at the statements below about "Sonny's Blues" and decide whether each would work as a thesis statement.
a. Because we sympathize with Sonny, the drug addict in the story, rather than with his brother, the narrator, "Sonny's Blues" presents a complex picture of drug use as a means of coping with sorrow and fear.
b. In "Sonny's Blues," James Baldwin writes about two brothers attempting to repair their relationship.
c. Both of the characters in "Sonny's Blues" -- Sonny and the narrator -- change over the course of the story.
d. In "Sonny's Blues" Baldwin uses four female characters, three of whom are mothers and one of whom is an artist, to establish his theme that there's no way to avoid suffering in life.
e. By the end of "Sonny's Blues," the narrator is liberated from his warped personality; he finally begins to feel, which means he will be freed from his fear and sadness.
f. Though many people would view the narrator as too conservative and, for most of the story, not caring enough toward his brother, the narrator's failings are easy to understand. Often, the only way to gain a foothold in life is to ignore people whose lifestyles or behaviors threaten your stability.
g. Sonny's friend, who approaches the narrator at the beginning of the story, tells the reader a great deal about the world in which the brothers live.
Why does a paper need a strong thesis statement? A paper needs a strong thesis statement so that it can make a strong argument. Weak thesis statements can result in papers with no clear direction or in papers that rely on plot summary to fill their pages. A good thesis statement predicts limits and organizes the content of the essay. In other words, it notifies your reader about the scope of the paper, telling him or her exactly what your paper will cover and in what order.
Can a thesis statement be more than one sentence? Yes. Often the best thesis statements are complex enough to require two or even three sentences. If you need several sentences to express your idea, use them!
Preview Questions on Jazz and Poetry
1. Once when Louis Armstrong was asked to define jazz, he replied, "If you have to ask, you'll never know." What does this response imply about jazz, or about musicians in general? To what extent do you think Armstrong's remark applies to poetry?
2. Are the rhythms of a jazz song more difficult to represent with language than those of other forms of music?
3. When compared to the prose in James Baldwin’s “Sonny’s Blues," what do you think might be lost or gained if one were to represent jazz poetically?
4. Some music critics have argued that one can hear jazz in more contemporary (and popular) styles of music, such as rock, blues, and hip-hop. How would one determine if this were true?
The Weary Blues
Langston Hughes
(1923)
1 Droning a drowsysyncopated tune,
2 Rocking back and forth to a mellow croon,
3I heard a Negro play.
4Down on Lenox Avenue the other night
5 By the pale dull pallor of an old gas light
6He did a lazy sway ....
7He did a lazy sway ....
8 To the tune o' those Weary Blues.
9 With his ebony hands on each ivory key
10 He made that poor piano moan with melody.
11 O Blues!
12Swaying to and fro on his rickety stool
13 He played that sad raggy tune like a musical fool.
14 Sweet Blues!
15 Coming from a black man's soul.
16 O Blues!
17 In a deep song voice with a melancholy tone
18 I heard that Negro sing, that old piano moan—
19"Ain't got nobody in all this world,
20Ain't got nobody but ma self.
21 I's gwine to quit ma frownin'
22 And put ma troubles on the shelf."
23 Thump, thump, thump, went his foot on the floor.
24 He played a few chords then he sang some more—
25 "I got the Weary Blues
26 And I can't be satisfied.
27 Got the Weary Blues
28 And can't be satisfied—
29 I ain't happy no mo'
30And I wish that I had died."
31 And far into the night he crooned that tune.
32 The stars went out and so did the moon.
33 The singer stopped playing and went to bed
34 While the Weary Blues echoed through his head.
35 He slept like a rock or a man that's dead.
Jazzonia
By Langston Hughes
Oh, silver tree!
Oh, shining rivers of the soul!
In a Harlem cabaret
Six long-headed jazzers play.
A dancing girl whose eyes are bold
Lifts high a dress of silken gold.
Oh, singing tree!
Oh, shining rivers of the soul!
Were Eve's eyes
In the first garden
Just a bit too bold?
Was Cleopatra gorgeous
In a gown of gold?
Oh, shining tree!
Oh, silver rivers of the soul!
In a whirling cabaret
Six long-headed jazzers play.