Week Six - James Baldwin "Sonny's Blues"

[Elodie Fichet]

I recognize the beauty of the story of the two failed brothers that never got to know each other until the older brother has a sort of epiphany and finally gets to know Sonny when he plays jazz on the piano at this concert once he’s out of prison. But what a long story! Baldwin really lost me a little after half way through it.

The story got to me after the beginning, I liked the way Baldwin described the ice melting yet never reducing in the narrator’s stomach, because I could relate to it, to this awfulness inside of you that creeps and will not go away. The exposition really got me but left me there while the story continued to unravel.

However, even if I did not really like the piece, I believe there’s a real sensitivity in this story; the characters are loaded with emotions and sound so true.

I also really admired how Baldwin handles dialogues. They all sound different; Sonny, the brother and the mother: after a couple of lines I would have been able to know who was talking without needing “I said; Sonny said.” I doubt that it has very often happened to me in a story.

I really like how Sonny has a more scattered way of talking, as if his sentences were split with internal emotions and refrain, while his brother speaks a little more carelessly. The mother has a very specific way of talking and I think that’s when we truly realize that the family in question in African American. It is not that obvious from the beginning although the narrator talks about the ghetto, I don’t believe it is assumed from then.

I think that the story could have been shorter, especially since there is no real sense of time. The reader does not really get clues on what is happening when or how long things take to evolve. Since there are no emotional rollercoaster, it gets tiring after a while and I personally wanted to see the denouement and how Sonny and his brother were going to manage to come together (or not) in the end.