Philip D Butler - What The Blues Are All About lyrics

Philip Butler ENG 218 November 24, 2015 What The Blues Are All About The suffering that Sonny endures within James Baldwin's short story “Sonny's Blues” may leave the impression on some that Harlem in the 1950's was an era of drug use and detrimental music, but under close interpretation of the way Sonny uses music to express and redeem himself shines light on this era, revealing it to be one of prosperity. The relationship and characteristics Sonny shares with his father develops the theme of apparent darkness in their surroundings which will unavoidably affect his life. It is revealed to us from the start that at some point in his life he had turned to drug use as a method to deal with the pain and darkness the world has imposed on him, a peril that the narrator, his brother, questions for a long time whether Sonny has/will escape or not. Yet as Sonny performs on stage for his brother for the first time, the narrator reaches the epiphany that his music, at first seeming like a foolish pa**ion leading nowhere, is Sonny's way of expressing his past suffering and how he overcomes it. Throughout the story, the narrator can never really seem to understand Sonny, but he puts the pieces together little by little; one being his own role in Sonny's life. When asked to move somewhere safer for their children, Sonny's father would respond that nowhere is safe, nowhere and no-one. Evidently there is something dark about their father's past that he is very private about. Although Sonny is regarded as quiet and gentle while their father is loud and rough, the narrator claims they are similar because “they both had —that same privacy.” (Baldwin 1071). The type of privacy that the narrator is talking about is one caused by suffering. He often refers to it as some kind of “darkness”, because it is hidden from others and cannot be seen or expressed. Evidence that Sonny hides a substantial amount of painful thoughts from the narrator is in the first letter he receives from the jailed Sonny: “I can't tell you much about how I got here. I mean I don't know how to tell you.” (Baldwin 1068). Although the reader never receives true insight to his pains due to this privacy, I believe their father could see a darkness foster in Sonny at a young age, explaining his worry for Sonny and why they could not get along. The reason their father keeps his own inner darkness from his children is because, as the narrator goes on to explain, to keep their children in the blissful, ignorant light. They want to keep the children at ease, for if they know what has happened “to [their father/elders], [they'll] know much too soon about what's going to happen to [themselves]” (Baldwin 1071). These darknesses appear plenty of times throughout the narrative, and for much of it, it appears that light will never be shined upon them. It is a while before the narrator comes to learn about his father's darkness and what this means for himself. The narrator is leaving his mother and getting married soon, and his mother is extremely worried for reasons the narrator does not initially understand. She interrupts his rea**uring talk, a**erting that he must look out for his younger brother. She understands that Sonny is inherently good, but “It ain't a question of his being a good boy…It ain't only the bad ones, nor yet the dumb ones that get s**ed under.” (Baldwin 1072). She goes on to verify this with the story of her husband's brother's d**h. This serves many purposes. It explains how the setting they live in is a cold, dark one, especially for blacks such as themselves. It explains their father's own privacy, why he only appears to always be strong while truly on the inside he has been torn. Lastly it defines what the narrator realizes to be his true role: to look after Sonny and protect him from the darkness the world has to offer, and if he cannot, to at least always be there for Sonny. As the years went on, this proved difficult. The two brothers would always argue until they ceased to communicate all together. Sonny was fighting demons within himself and now with his older brother out of the picture, he searched for a way to feel, from his pains, “distant. And — and sure” (Baldwin 1081). Sonny would go on to use d** in order to cope with his pains until he was incarcerated for his usage. Sonny was always a good person, he just fell victim to the area around him, despite his efforts to leave via the navy. Now attempting to stay faithful to sobriety, he invites his older brother to watch him perform, something he had never formally done. Throughout the narrative there repeatedly appears to be a darkness within Sonny that the narrator fails to understand, likely due to Sonny's private ways and reluctance to deliver incisive truths to the narrator. Starting soon after the d**h of their mother, the narrator's opinion of Sonny's dream of being a musician was that it was ridiculous, you could not make a living off of it, that the constant rehearsal served no purpose but to irritate all within the vicinity of its noise. Yet now going to see Sonny perform in front of the musical crowd, the narrator realizes he is “in Sonny's world. Or, rather: his kingdom.” (Baldwin 1084). What originally seemed to be a meaningless hobby of Sonny's is now revealed to be how he gained a following whom had elected him king. How he had captivated the attention of the whole place can be explained with his interpretation of the woman singing gospel music on the street. Sonny questions whether he wants to go on living in hell, and in the process reveals something about the power of music. “Listening to that woman sing, it struck me all of a sudden how much suffering she must have had to go through—to sing like that.” (Baldwin 1082). This says something about how Sonny regards music. It reveals that beautiful music can be derived from much suffering, in other words, artists who have suffered very much may express it through music, and the end result can be something magnificent. So as Sonny and Creole and the other band members play in front of the narrator, they talk to each other with the instruments as if engaged in dialogue. The narrator observes that Creole is asking Sonny to let his emotions loose through his playing; “He was Sonny's witness that deep water and drowning were not the same thing—“ (Baldwin 1085). This deep water is indicative of Sonny's suffering, but by entering the deep water, he is floating, observing what is now underneath him, expressing it through his dialogue with the other players, and thus earning his redemption in the eyes of his brother. Once Sonny really gets into his groove, the band “began to tell us what the blues were all about…the tale of how we suffer, and how we are delighted, and how we may triumph.. must be heard.. it's the only light we've got in all this darkness.” (Baldwin 1086). What the blues are all about is expressing pain, make it able to be heard, felt, interpreted, all though music. By being sure of himself in doing this he is transcending past all this pain and showing that he can withstand the thought of it without falling victim to his surroundings again. Being set in Harlem during the Jazz Age, this story serves the purpose of explaining the plight of many growing up in Harlem: d**, gangs, and crime ridden streets. Some may argue that the legacy of Harlem ends there. Yet the tail end of the function this story serves is how it cultivated many great minds that would go down in history. With pasts full of suffering, many great artists use this as fuel as prolific authors and innovative musicians would rise up out of Harlem including Sonny's favorite inspiration, Charlie Parker. Baldwin proposes the theme that America is a cruel place to the black man and identifies with Sonny in the sense that he is giving back to the place which has caused him so much grief. Performing in front of the audience is Sonny's freedom from his reclusiveness, and it tells us what the blues are all about. _______________________________________________________ Works Cited Baldwin, James. “Sonny's Blues.” The Concise Heath Anthology of American Literature. Ed. Lauter, Paul. Boston: Wadsworth, 2014. 1062-1087. Print.