“Sonny’s Blues” by James Baldwin chronicles the relationship between two brothers who are both at various points in their lives, narrated by Sonny’s unnamed brother. Although the story is focused on Sonny’s life, readers also get an understanding about the narrator’s reactions to Sonny’s actions. Baldwin arranges the story’s events in a non-chronological order, doing so to build an understanding between the two brothers, where Sonny’s actions are the scope of the story. The symbolic motif of light and darkness that is constantly illustrated throughout the story helps support the theme of addiction to drugs, suffering, and music.
The opening paragraph of the short story mentions light and darkness imagery for the first time. The narrator states, “I stared at it in the swinging lights of the subway car, and in the faces and bodies of the people, and in my own face, trapped in the darkness which roared outside” (122). The darkness is the depiction of Harlem that the narrator and Sonny are trapped in — the physical, economic, and social barriers. Since the story is to a large extent about the hardships that African Americans face, the light and darkness could also be compared to skin color. At the time this story was set in, African Americans returning home from war had little credit or no respect. Harlem had turned into a rundown and poverty stricken city that trapped people who once had hopes of running away from it.
Tracy Sherard states in her article that “The image of the narrator’s face reflected in the window of the subway car, along with the hint of the roaring sound of the “darkness,” or the subway itself certainly points to the “transience” of the railway juncture Baker views as unique to the matrix of the blues” (692). Sherard then connects Baldwin’s description of the face being trapped in the darkness and states that “Baldwin’s use of trapped at the beginning of this text is no accident, for negotiating the trap of a specific cultural narrative is the subject of “Sonny’s Blues,” as well as the unique version of the blues Sony eventually achieves” (692). At first, the narrator is trapped in his own darkness, but at the end of the story, he realizes that he isn’t. Once he sees his brother play his music, he too becomes free.
The narrator, an algebra teacher, mentions that the harsh realities of the Harlem streets have taken away the possible light from the lives of his brother, Sonny, and his young students. Every character in “Sonny’s Blues” is suffering from something; whether it is from grief, poverty, addiction, or limited opportunities. For the young children in the neighborhood that the narrator teaches, it is the possibility of never having opportunities in life that exceed the limitations of where they grew up. This is illustrated in the following quote:
These boys, now, were living as we’d been living then, they were growing up with a rush and their heads bumped abruptly against the low ceiling of their actual possibilities. They were filled with rage. All they really knew were two darknesses, the darkness of their lives, which was now closing in on them, and the darkness of the movies, which had blinded them to that other darkness, and in which they now, vindictively dreamed, at once more together than they were at any other time, and more alone” (123).
The passage demonstrates how the darkness has overcome the lives of the children, much to their unknown knowledge. The darkness that is consistently mentioned in the passage is the children’s lack of opportunities that are unavailable to them because of their barriers. The idea of light is unfamiliar with them because their race, social, and economic barriers are keeping them trapped. The darkness of movies mentioned is an escape from reality, this is the darkness that is familiar to them.
The motif of light and darkness is illustrated when the narrator recalls his childhood with Sonny, remembering Sunday evenings with his family. He mentions “the darkness growing against the windowpanes” (130). The darkness was outside, it hadn’t affected his family yet. This could be connected back to the darkness the narrator states that he sees in the subway car and is supported when Sherard states that, “The “darkness” enriching on the windowpanes echoes the image of the narrator’s face being reflected by the window of the subway car as it roars through the “darkness” outside, an image indicative of the self-examining in which the narrator engages as the story progresses” (697).
He then recalls the children sitting on the mother’s lap and states:
“the silence, the darkness coming, and the darkness in the faces frighten the child obscurely. He hopes that the hand which strokes his forehead will never stop — never die. But something deep and watchful in the child knows that this is bound to end, is already ending. And when the light fills the room, the child is filled with darkness” (130-131).
The narrator is showing in this quote that along with the light comes knowledge of the world for the child, even though it is empty. As the child goes on to expose himself to the world, a part of his innocence and childhood is lost. Due to this, the child may want to stay in the darkness because it is what he is comfortable with.
Another important mention of light and darkness in the short story is when the mother is telling Sonny’s brother about his father’s brother. She’s telling them about:
“This particular Saturday night, him and your father was coming home from some place, and they were both a little drunk and there was a moon that night, it was bright like day … He says he never in his life has seen anything as dark as that road after the lights of that car had gone away” (132).
The imagery of the light and darkness is mentioned when the moon was out and the metaphor ‘was bright like day,’ is stated. Following that, the lightness is gone as soon as the car hits Sonny’s father’s brother. What was once first ‘bright like day,’ is now dark. The light and dark mentioned here can be compared to the tragedy of what happened; the father and his brother were enjoying there time together and in a moment, that all changed.
Before Sonny’s drug addiction got to him, the narrator states that:
“When he was about as old as the boys in my classes his face had been bright and open, there was a lot of copper in it; and he’d had wonderfully direct brown eyes, and great gentleness and privacy … I didn’t want to believe that I’d ever see my brother going down, coming to nothing, all that light in his face gone out, in the condition I’d already seen so many others” (123).
Once again, the light and darkness imagery is mentioned. The brightness is the light that is in Sonny’s face could be due to his youthfulness, being innocent and not knowing that a world filled with drugs existed. “All that light in his face gone out, in the condition I’d already seen so many others,” is the darkness. The narrator is talking about Sonny’s drug use, specifically heroin. The ‘light’ mentioned could be the destroying factor. He could be insinuating that the light leaves everyone eventually.
Sonny’s addiction to heroin introduces the central theme of drugs in “Sonny’s Blues,” that impacts himself and his family. The narrator first mentions it when he tells the readers that Sonny, “had been picked up, the evening before, in a raid on an apartment downtown, for peddling and using heroin” (123). There is no sugarcoating the drug addiction that Sonny had when he was picked up. He had succumbed to peddling to feed his addiction even more.
The narrator is a teacher to a classroom filled with kids of Harlem who have little hope of escaping the life they grew up in. “Yet it had happened and here I was, talking about algebra to a lot of boys who might, every one of them for all I knew, be popping off needles every time they went to the head. Maybe it did more for them than algebra could” (123). Even though he has a college degree and didn’t succumb to drugs, the narrator begins to understand that some of his students will probably never have the opportunity to leave Harlem. They could potentially end up being addicts, much to his dismay.
The motif of light is incorporated into Sonny’s love of music — specifically jazz, another important theme in the story. While the narrator first associates jazz with darkness, drugs, and Sonny’s addiction, Sonny sees music as his escape from pain. The narrator connects music with light when he sees Sonny perform. He states that, “For, while the tale of how we suffer, and how we are delighted, and how we may triumph is never new, it always must be heard. here isn’t any other tale to tell, it’s the only light we’ve got in all this darkness” (147). At first, the narrator was disconnected from his roots, especially with Sonny. However, in this passage, he finally understands Sonny and is reconnected with him. There is a new light created in the darkness. Sonny’s music gives people a way of finding meaning in their lives, that the darkness is only for a matter of time. This is supported in Suzy Bernstein Goldman article“Hames Baldwin’s “Sonny’s Blues”: A Message in Music.” Goldman states that “Sonny’s music stirs special memories in the brothers’ lives, but these blues belong to all of us, for they symbolize the darkness which surrounds all of those who fail to listen to and remain unheard by their fellow men” (233).
“Sonny’s Blues” ends with Sonny and the narrator finally achieving the lightness they longed for from the beginning. As the narrator is watching Sonny and Creole, another musician, perform at the cup, the final imagery of light is mentioned:
There was a long pause, while they talked up there in the indigo light and after awhile I saw the girl put a Scotch and milk on top of the piano for Sonny…Then he put it back on the top of the piano. For me, then, as they began to play again, it glowed and shook above my brother’s head like the very cup of trembling (148).
In this passage, the narrator is at the nightclub in the Village that Sonny is performing his music at. This is the climax of the story because he finally understands Sonny through his music. The mention of the word ‘indigo light,’ is significant because indigo is a very deep and dark shade of blue. It connects with Sonny because jazz music is seen as blues. It can also be a play on words and connects to the story’s title, “Sonny’s Blues.” The indigo light is seen as an opposition between the light and darkness. At the end of the story, Sonny is glowing because he has finally reached the lightness he has always wanted.
The two brothers have attempted to repair their relationship. Through light and darkness, they have overcome their differences and build a relationship that isn’t marked by drugs or suffering. Light was a representation of all the positive and hopefulness that occurred in Sonny and the narrators life. When one thinks of light, they think of happy times. The child sitting on the mother’s lap and Sonny’s bright face symbolize light. The representation of darkness was the barriers that the characters had — the haunting figure. Sonny’s life in prison and his addiction to heroin and Harlem during that time embodies darkness. At the beginning of the story, Sonny was entrapped in darkness. He was trying to escape the life that he had grown up in, a poverty stricken city. Though his music, Sonny escapes the darkness and finds light.