A Literary Analysis Of Sonny's Blues By James Baldwin

Everyone wants to make their own original stamp in the world, but sometimes the problem may be they do not know how to or someone they know is holding them back. The story of Sonny’s Blues by James Baldwin, the narrator tries a lot of times to change his younger brother’s (Sonny) mind about being a musician. Little does he know that all sonny wants to be is a musician. With that being said, sometimes you have to trust yourself to let people go expand their wings. Sonny had a real bad drug addiction growing up and had to jail time because of his addiction. The narrator is to be the “good son”. He is an algebra teacher and was in army. The narrator always looked after his brother because of the rough and hard neighborhood they grew up in, which was Harlem in the 50’s. It was not until after Sonny got released from jail that his brother really tried to take control of Sonny’s life by telling him what to do and always trying to change his mind on what Sonny wanted to do as far as his career. The narrator always sent Sonny to live at his wife’s Isabella house at one point in his life to watch over him. Sonny does not want his brother trying to control his life, in fact Sonny …show more content…
In the talk the mother explain to the narrator that if anything would happen to her that she would not have someone to look over Sonny. He explains to his mother that nothing is going to happen to her or Sonny. So, the mother continues to talk to the narrator and she starts telling him a story about how his father had a brother. The father’s brother passed away due to getting ran over by a car that some white drunk men were driving. The passing of the brother tore the father apart. “Till the day he died he weren’t sure but that every white man he saw was the man that killed his brother” (Baldwin 133). He was never the same after his brother