PRESENTACIÓN ICONOS

sONNY´S BLUES BALDWIM

1957

james baldwin

James Baldwin,(born August 2, 1924, New York, New York—died December 1, 1987, Saint-Paul, France), American essayist, novelist, and playwright whose eloquence and passion on the subject of race in America made him an important voice, particularly in the late 1950s and early 1960s, in the United States and, later, through much of western Europe. The eldest of nine children, he grew up in poverty in the Black ghetto of Harlem in New York City. After graduation from high school, he began a restless period of ill-paid jobs, self-study, and literary apprenticeship in Greenwich Village, the bohemian quarter of New York City. He left in 1948 for Paris, where he lived for the next eight years. In 1957 he returned to the United States and became an active participant in the civil rights struggle that swept the nation. James Baldwin’s novels included Go Tell It on the Mountain (1953), Giovanni’s Room (1956), Another Country (1962), and If Beale Street Could Talk (1974; film 2018). He wrote the plays The Amen Corner (1955) and Blues for Mister Charlie (1964)

setting

1950s

We could consider the setting of the story a "semanticall charged space" because it leads Sonny, the main character, to fall into drugs. There was a lot of poverty, prostitutes, lack of opportunities and danger

Harlem, New York

"Boys exactly like the boys we once had been found themselves smothering in these houses, came down into the streets for light and air and found themselves encircled by disaster. Some escaped the trap, most didn’t. Those who got out always left something of themselves behind."

"You can see the darkness growing against the windowpanes and you hear the street noises every now and again, or maybe the jangling beat of a tambourine from one of the churches close by, but it’s real quiet in the room. For a moment nobody’s talking, but every face looks darkening, like the sky outside…Everyone is looking at something a child can’t see"

harlem renaissance

Harlem Renaissance, a blossoming (c. 1918–37) of African American culture, particularly in the creative arts, and the most influential movement in African American literary history. Embracing literary, musical, theatrical, and visual arts, participants sought to reconceptualize “the Negro” apart from the white stereotypes that had influenced Black peoples’ relationship to their heritage and to each other.

The Harlem Renaissance was a phase of a larger New Negro movement that had emerged in the early 20th century and in some ways ushered in the civil rights movement of the late 1940s and early 1950s

“You got to hold on to your brother,” she said, “and don’t let him fall, no matter what it looks like is happening to him and no matter how evil you gets with him. You going to be evil with him many a time. But don’t you forget what I told you, you hear?…You may not be able to stop nothing from happening. But you got to let him know you’s there.”

themes

The Obligation toward Brotherly Love

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. There isn’t any other tale to tell, it’s the only light we’ve got in all this darkness.

Suffering Music as a form of expression Drugs and alcohol

"All I know about music is that not many people ever really hear it. And even then, on the rare occasions when something opens within, and the music enters, what we mainly hear, or hear corroborated, are personal, private, vanishing evocations. But the man who creates the music is hearing something else, is dealing with the roar rising from the void and imposing order on it as it hits the air. What is evoked in him, then, is of another order, more terrible because it has no words, and triumphant, too, for that same reason."

I couldn't tell you when Mama died – but the reason I wanted to leave Harlem so bad was to get away from drugs. And then, when I ran away, that's what I was running from – really.

plot

Time passes, but the narrator never writes to Sonny in prison until the narrator’s young daughter, Grace, dies. Sonny writes a long letter back to his brother.

The narrator remembers the very last time he saw his mother alive: she told him to make sure to look out for Sonny after she's gone.

Sonnyd invites his brother to watch him perform in a small jazz club

The unnamed narrator of the story discovers from a newspaper that his younger brother, Sonny, has been arrested for selling and using heroin

When Sonny gets out of jail, the narrator takes Sonny back to his own family’s apartment.

DENOUTMENT: The narrator realizes why his brother needs to play music

INTRODUCTION RISING ACTION

CLIMAX

CHARACTERS

3.

1.

4.

2.

SONNY

ISABEL AND GRACE

UNNAMED NARRATOR

CREOLE

Creole is a bass player and the leader of the jazz band Sonny plays with at the end of the story

A gifted jazz pianist. He is arrested for selling and using heroin

The narrator´s wife and young daughter, who dies of polio

A high school algebra teacher He is the older brother of Sonny and is married to Isabel, with whom he has 3 children.

SYMBOLS

Darkness represents human suffering and lives limited by poverty and racism; whereas light illuminates, both literally and figuratively "I feel like a man who’s been trying to climb up out of some deep, real deep and funky hole and just saw the sun up there, outside. I got to get outside" (Sonny)

This image is about salvation and suffer, it comes from the Book of Isaiah in the Bible "For me, then, as they began to play again, it glowed and shook above my brother's head like the very cup of trembling"

Light and Darkness

The Cup of Trembling

devices

ICE: fear, dread, shock: "A great block of ice got settled in my belly and kept melting there slowly all day long. . .. It was a special kind of ice. It kept melting, sending trickles of ice water all up and down my veins, but it never got less. (2)" METAPHOR

"The cup of trembling" (239) a Biblical reference to the Book of Isaiah 51:22 ALLUSION

For the narrator, Jazz is an alien, whereas for Sonny it represents a ray of light. By the end of the story, jazz functions as a bridge between the two brothers. When the narrator goes to see Sonny play, he learns something about his brother that he's never understood before. When he hears Sonny play, he finally starts to appreciate the wonder and terror of being a musician.

title

The whole story is about the blues that Sonny must battle as he struggles to recover from drug addiction, growing up in a tough Harlem neighborhood, becoming a musician, among others. This story is literally the story of Sonny's sadness.