Rhetorical Analysis on Sonnys Blues by James Baldwin - Essay Sample

The Sonnys Blues is a short story of two brothers present and future life. They view the world surrounding them differently despite the fact that the pain and sorrow is part of their day today life. They have their own way of dealing with their pain and suffering which they learn Harlem from different life experiences. Sonny lives a careless life by chalking up heroin to avoid facing the reality of his unfortunate life in Harlem while his brother hopes to live a life different from his teaching career and live like Sonny.

Is your time best spent reading someone else’s essay? Get a 100% original essay FROM A CERTIFIED WRITER!

Order now

Harlem where this story takes place is used as a representation of a trap from which the two brothers must fight to escape. Imprisonment becomes recurrent in the story and one of the brothers is physically jailed and the narrator uses the word trapped repeatedly to describe brothers neighborhood. Additionally, the brothers are trapped in ghetto filled with anger such that the housing projects are referred to as rocks in the middle of the boiling sea a definition that shows the serious anger that exists in Harlem. Angry characters appear severally in the story starting with the furious man at the street revival, the students of the narrator and the narrators father. In one scene, Sonny wonders why the steep pressure from all the hatred fails to explode blowing the neighborhood apart.

The narrator however has selfish aspiration to assimilate and lead a reputable life; he wishes to conform to white bourgeois culture thus exempting himself from his family and parts of the experiences African American. However, when he knows about the imprisonment of his brother he is not compassionate and he tries as much as he can to keep distance. He is also confesses not to know a jazz musician, Charlie Parker, hence unfamiliar with African American Culture. He also despises his own heritage when he sees barmaid dancing to something black and bouncy and he is filled with hatred.

Music on the other hand lays an important role in the story particularly the illusion in the topic of the story which seems to have odd inconsistency. This because Sonny is a jazz is a singer but not a blues singer. In contrary, Baldwins perception of the blues is wide, such that the narrator describes the blues as the story of how people suffer, how they get delighted and the way in which they might succeed. Therefore, jazz portrays blues revision the same way of representing old blues thus when Sonny plays jazz is the same as playing blues which are significant African American musical forms therefore suitable to the storys focus on the community .Additionally, the jazz musician, Louis Armstrong represents Sonnys form of jazz that is filled by white culture a critic that shows Sonnys protest against Armstrong while the narrators familiarity about Armstrong and unawareness of Parker shows his isolation from the black culture.

On the other hand, Sonny plays bebop that emphasis on solos a perfect sub-genre that bears his need for self expression as well as its cultural position as an affirmation for black identity stands out to be the best form of reinforcing his connection to his heritage and community. Charlie parker, the bebop founder is Sonnys idol he killed him due to his heroin addiction. Louis Armstrong, the jazz musician the narrator prefers, represents a form of jazz Sonny considers to be co-opted by white culture. As one critic explains, Sonnys protestations against Armstrong carry a strong Uncle Tom implication (Albert 180). The narrators knowledge of Armstrong and ignorance of Parker highlight his alienation from black culture.

Like music, suffering is outlined in the story, the darkness that feels Harlem is a representation of suffering experienced in the Community. The narrator has the darkness that he is destined to endure as well as his parents. The darkness is all over from subway car, revealing via the windows, reflected in a pair of lost eyes and Sonny tells his brother that it is inescapable. The murder of the narrators uncle, Sonnys addiction, Grace death supports claim. Suffering has both redemptive and potential and humanizing power such it allows people understand each other suffering such that the narrator understands what sonny is going through only after the loss of his daughter.

Despite the narrators epiphany, the ending of Sonnys Blues remains ambiguous. Deep in his moment of redemption, the narrator notes that trouble still stretched above [the brothers], longer than the sky . Sonnys struggle during his first set may not only represent past struggles, but struggles to come. As he reminded his brother, his addiction could return. The drink the narrator sends Sonny, a scotch and milk, symbolizes the ambiguous nature of the ending. The scotch, an alcoholic drink, represents the darkness and the milk, a drink often associated with the innocence of children, represents the light. When Sonny sets it above his piano, the drink shakes like the very cup of trembling, a biblical allusion to the suffering endured by Gods people. Whether Sonnys suffering has ended is unclea