In the end of "Sonny's Blues," arguably the most beautiful short story in the English language, Baldwin turns our attention to a "Scotch and milk." First the narrator's brother drinks from it and looks at his brother. Then he puts the drink back on the piano. Stay with the narrator's gaze and his wonder and his fear and his love, all the emotions you can conjure, and you'll be transported outside yourself into the music of this story. In this story and the other two you're reading, notice how Baldwin takes elements and explode them so as to take on surreal, transcendent dimensions.
In Sonny's Blues, seemingly small details such as the "Scotch and milk" become metaphors for the dynamics between an older and a younger brother. The actions and the items are simple and to the point. They don't need an explanation, because we understand the characterization of the brothers throughout the story. The "Scotch and milk" contains so much power, and at the same time, makes complete sense. However, that is not the only telling detail within this story. One thing in particular that stood out to me was how language, specifically dialogue, played into the family dynamics. For instance, when the main character was talking to Sonny's friend, he said things like, "Yes, I already know about it," remaining formal and curt, because this man was someone he himself said he hated, and then didn't. It was a complicated relationship, where he didn't feel comfortable. In contrast, when he was speaking to his mother, a relationship that was familial and warm, he said things like, "Lord, Lord, Mama, I didn't know it was like that." Immediately, we understand the dynamics of their relationships, and understand how the main character is situated within these relationships. Language and dialogue are keys in developing characters throughout all three of his stories in this anthology. Through dialogue, we learn the submissiveness and all at once powerful voice in the wife in Going to Meet the Man, and the brusque ignorant voice of the husband.
ReplyDeleteThere is also the idea in Sonny's Blues that the main character sees Sonny's friend as Sonny himself - even thinks it is Sonny for a moment - and offers him a cigarette and money. He can't explain why he does this, yet he does it anyway. Similarly, after he feels the guilt of receiving his brother's letter, he continues to send Sonny letters, and "whatever [I] could." They grapple with relating to each other in the current day, and keep things surface level. This continuous giving and guilt that he feels is typical of an older brother, especially when intertwined with the conversation he has with his mother about his father's brother, and that he needs to protect his own brother from the world. He feels this pressure that continues as an undercurrent throughout the story, only overtly surfacing at the end of the story, when he sees and hears his brother play and sees "his mother's face again, and felt, for the first time how the stones of the road she had walked on must have bruised her feet." Suddenly he feels all at once connected to his mother, father, father's brother, and brother all at once.
Baldwin's work can be very frank at times, often to the point of being a little uncomfortable. That kind of approach helps the reader grasp the metaphors of the story and explore them in great detail. Specifically, the role that religion plays in 'Going to Meet the Man' and 'Exodus'. Understanding the uneasiness of the relationship between man and faith helps us better understand ourselves in the process. And with this, we can understand ourselves even more.
ReplyDeleteBaldwin's work pulled me into the heightened, surreal perspective and emotions of the POV characters. At the end of "Sonny's Blues," the narrator is struck speechless by his brother's music, at how he "filled the air with life, his life." Even earlier, when Sonny opens up on page 79, the narrator is struck speechless at the intimacy of the moment. The emotions at play between the two brothers leaves the narrator helpless.
ReplyDeleteAnd that helplessness is a concept that is throughout all of the stories at play. Jesse (in his own perspective at least) finds himself without power, committing the horrible things he does because he "has no choice," overwhelmed by his own bigotry, just as he was overwhelmed by his childhood memories of the first time he was experienced to extreme racial violence. Florence's desire to go North and leave her family seems to be out of her hands, and her anger and resentment spills out beyond her control. In every piece, the characters are put on display, with all their complex feelings gathered into a signal point or instance.
Baldwin's work is always interesting to read. Throughout 'Sonny's Blues', the voice of the older brother was made more personable by not being able to understand Sonny. The essay's dynamics continue to show the relationship (or lack thereof) between the older and younger brother. Baldwin was blunt at times, but I thought that added to the guilt the older brother felt for not understanding Sonny. I thought some of the forwardness showed in the scene when the older brother was downplaying Sonny's dream of wanting to be a musician. One thing I thought was interesting is how Baldwin used dialogue. When Sonny opened up to his older brother about wanting to be a musician, and how some artists have or want to experience to suffer to make great art. Followed by the older brother trying to laugh off much of what Sonny told him. I thought the language and dialogue in this moment was beautiful, and really showed how the older brother doesn't understand Sonny. The ending scene there is little to no dialogue. The final two or three pages there is no dialogue. Baldwin uses this change to recreate and focus on the sensations the older brother feels when Sonny plays.
ReplyDeleteJames Baldwin’s stories strike me as flush with the notion of quiet raging grief. He has great diversity in the voice and tone of his characters and narrators, but all of the stories seem to carry a quiet sadness and a sad joy, all wrapped up together indiscriminately. Baldwin uses the subtle sadness of imagery and metaphor to depict the emotional chasm and lack of depth of understanding between the two brothers in “Sonny’s Blues.”
ReplyDeleteThe range and depth of how Baldwin presents place and setting is very interesting to me. From poetic imagery and hyper focusing on color and sight to the bare basics of places to, finally, the darker internal feelings held towards such personal places, spoken through examining the lived experiences or potential experiences held within them. Two specific examples I love are him referring to streets and houses in Harlem as the “killing streets of our childhood” and “rocks in the middle of a boiling sea.”
He combines basic emotion so soundly with place, and then elevates the two together to create something miraculously beautiful. I think it is this process, the poetics, the place, the memories of place, the emotion, all stirred up in a pot to create the magic stew that is the beauty of his stories.
"Sonny's Blues" is full of dynamics in, as Honor said, "seemingly small details," and the scotch and milk is included in that. In some cases, the details are spelling out a dynamic between the two brothers, but I think that with the scotch and milk, it is a dynamic within Sonny. I can imagine that milk might represent innocence, or perhaps highlighting the fact that he is the younger brother, while the scotch is a lack of innocence, or maturity or independence.
ReplyDeleteI find it interesting that the last few words make a biblical reference, with the "cup of trembling." The Bible verse basically says, "I have taken the cup of trembling from your hands, you will never drink again." I've been thinking about how this is significant, and I am so amazed about how cleverly the line is placed, giving an open-endedness to the story that causes it to never quite end. There is a "something else" that follows the end of the story, a future, that all stories have but not all stories imply. "Going to Meet the Man" sort of has this aspect, ending with a morning scene, but "Exodus" implies ending, with the distance "swallowing [Florence] up."
There's a saying that when words fail, there's music. I have always had a firm connection to music, and I fully agree with that statement - music is capable of expressing emotion that words can't. So James Baldwin is playing with the language of words versus music in a very interesting way in "Sonny's Blues." His lyrical description of Sonny's Blues expresses with words how Sonny expresses his soul with music. It should be impossible, but with the aid of Baldwin's overflowing imagery, he pulls it off. The moment oat the piano is one where Sonny is speaking an entirely different language - one that his brother doesn't really understand until the very end of the short. But The image of the scotch and milk is one that Sonny's brother can connect with. It's amazing how Baldwin uses words to describe all the ways people communicate without language. Interweaving music, imagery, and blunt statements of emotion creates an intense and layered story. You could mine this piece for days, and probably still find new imagery and metaphor. Because Baldwin switches between these languages(music, words, images),the story packs a huge emotional punch. He has so many different tools for connecting to the reader.
ReplyDeleteA hard story to read, Going to Meet the Man, plays with juxtapositions of opposites. The story operates on a political level but still the main interest of the story is psychologically rooted in racism, and evokes feelings from the readers that are largely emotional. Baldwin clearly likes his metaphors, and there are less in Going to Meet the Man than in Sonny's Blues, but they still exist. For example, his wife's name is Grace, which is not to be overlooked, and he thinks of her as incredibly pure. Additionally, Sonny's Blues deals with themes of being trapped and being free, whether this be physically or mentally. Sonny is trapped physically, but is able to free himself mentally through music. The narrator is seemingly "trapped" in his city of Harlem without his brother around, but is physically free, unlike his brother. This story plays around a lot with opposites that ultimately come into cohesion by the end. Baldwin is a fan of wearing his heart on his sleeve, it seems, and never disguises trauma as something it isn't, never romanticizing it.
ReplyDeleteOne of the things that James Baldwin does very well is imbue small things with immense symbolic meaning that resonates with the overall theme of the story. It often resonates with religious themes as well. In "Sonny's Blues" we see this in the Scotch with milk that the narrator's brother drinks and puts on the piano at the end of the story, and which the narrator calls 'the very cup of trembling'. This calls back to the addiction narrative that has surrounded Sonny for the entire narrative, where Sonny switches out one addictive substance (drugs) for another (alcohol and music). The milk also ties into the slippery slope narrative about how Sonny's friend says that he will go through cycles of using and not using, depending on how supportive the narrator is, where the milk is something both wholesome (the support of the narrator and going to see his brother play for the first time) and masking the problem (the various addictions).
ReplyDeleteAnother such symbol shows up in "Exodus", with the daughter's reflection on the 'great, white clock at the railway station, on which the hands did not cease to move.' One of the major themes in "Exodus" is time and how it progresses. The mother is running out of time and in time was left behind by all of her children- the ones who were sold and killed and raised away from each other, and now by Florence. Gabriel is upset his sister is leaving him to take care of his mother for the rest of her limited time on earth. The train station clock is a reminder that time never stops moving, even the year it's set in is significant, 1900, a new century, when Florence is leaving behind the old and going into the new.
Sonny's Blues exhibits so many Beautiful moments in which a comment is made on a way to go about life. These are moments that the narrator seems to dismiss almost offhandedly, these are moments of thought process, like, "I was thinking this would probably turn out to be one of those things kids go through an I shouldn't make it seem important by pushing it too hard." That phrase only touches down for a moment, in the middle of a conversation and it makes you care so deeply for the main character, it's point of plot, characterization, and adds a dimension of thought to the pace of the conversation. Baldwin plays the story in a direction beautiful without ever giving you a direct iea of what's about to happen. The story pulses through points of destruction, and reconconstruction that the narrators bitterness and truth seems to mimic.
ReplyDeleteThis statement will be very cliche, but, James Baldwin really does have a way with words. His writing, especially the imagery really pushes the reader into his world. The way he constructs his worlds creates a very dark, dream-like feeling, as if we, the reader are floating around in the world of his characters. He likes to take us into the head of his characters whether they are good or evil or somewhere in between. His writing itself is very lyrical and beautiful; it is very easy to slip into. I can feel myself slipping into his scenes and relating to them even though I live in the modern day. He doesn't leave the reader out of anything he writes; the reader is very much present in his writing and that is what I like about it the most.
ReplyDeleteAs Ben Neihart wrote in the introduction, James Baldwin engages with the past as passionately as he engages with the present. This element that Baldwin uses stuck out to me the most in the three story collection. In "Sonny's Blues," Baldwin frequently flashed back to the brothers' lives in times of hardship and when they struggled to connect with each. The story paralleled these flashbacks with the present to tell the story of how the older brother was finally able to connect with his baby brother. In "Going to Meet the Man," the horrifying images from Jesse's first lynching when he was a child acts in a way to explain Jesse's motivations and actions as an adult, however fucked up they may be. And in "Exodus," Baldwin put the young generation head-to-head with the old generation to show it's differences. The daughter was eager to leave her past life behind (including her mother and father) to start her new life in New York, but the parents were quick to oppose that decision because they didn't want to see her leave to grow up.
ReplyDeleteI thought the writing style of Sonny's Blues was incredible. For a while I've been struggling with comma usage. It's perhaps my biggest grammatical faux pas, and I often overuse commas when there needn't be any at all. In Sonny's Blues, however, Baldwin turns paragraphs into one-liners majestically with dozens of perfectly-placed commas that, while not traditionally placed, add something almost indescribable to the story. There's characterization hidden within the commas. There are extra details, ones we would never get in quite the same way if Baldwin wrote in shorter sentences. I read the story twice and still can't get enough of the way he makes magic with those commas.
ReplyDelete