Sonny's Blues
Tristan Riesen
I think James Baldwin’s short story Sonny’s Blues is one of, if not the best short story we’ve read so far in class. The writing is smooth, and comes off the page like listening to a great song. The words just kind of fell right off the pages for me. The writing style was very personal to me, and not just because of the first person point of view, but because of the writing being written almost like an account of something. I felt like it was a recollection of the narrators thoughts, part of felt like a stream of consciousness with the most minute detail.
The narrator has had a tough life: growing up in the projects, losing his mother and father, but what has to be the worst is the loss of his little girl. On top of all that, he deals with trying to be a good husband, and continue to be a good father to his other children. The relationship which is focused on the most is obviously between him and his brother Sonny, which is also the relationship that the narrator seems to have the most trouble with. He talks about his struggles being an older brother, and the first time he felt he took that responsibility seriously.
I really liked the idea of being in the first person with the narrator not being the main character. I’ve read stories like this before, but never have I taken into account the literary effects this would have on the story. Talking about the different points of view in class helped me to relearn some rudimentary high school English. This time around, I saw there was the same deep emotional impact felt with first person, but with this story there was an added emphasis on the narrator being the older and therefore considered the wiser of the two. But I think the narrator’s point is that he just got lucky. There are so many young men and women out there, as the narrator says, who could end up severely addicted to drugs, and he was fortunate enough not to be one of them. As for Sonny, he sort of drew a short straw, and felt things much differently than his brother did.