Conflict In Sonny's Blues

Whether it be addiction, racism, poverty or grief, how a character accepts and deals with pain and suffering determines whether they let it consume them or they choose to fight through it suffering is something that is inescapable. Through complex characterization and conflict, James Baldwin in “Sonny’s Blues” shows how both Sonny and his brother handle all of the suffering they experience throughout their lives, and how that pain shapes them as characters.
Both of the main characters in this short story share a sense of suffering, but with the narrator and Sonny, you get glimpses of this suffering clearer and how each character responded differently to the suffering they experience. This could be described as both internal and external conflicts. …show more content…
The narrator found a way to fill the void of his lost daughter with the void he lost with his brother. With Sonny, his suffering is complicated. His pain has been longer, and it’s deeper within him. Sonny explains how heroin and music helped making his suffering his own. He explains how it kept him from drowning deep from the pain which was overwhelming. He tries to escape from it but with Sonny this suffering is unbeatable and he lets it take over him. And Sonny knows that this addiction can come back at any given time whenever he feels life is just going to …show more content…
Both being black, different sides of the spectrum of black life is seen. Although different in situations the main characters are developed deeply by conflicts they receive through the story that root from the same problems. They come from an era and environment with a heritage of racism, poverty and drug abuse. With their environment, it shaped them to become who they are in present time. With the narrator, the full story is told from a more reliable source. The narrator is a complex character that is seen to grow and change from the beginning of the story. Being from a “class” typically limited in opportunity he attempted to strive. The conflicts the narrator endured shaped him into someone who became more understanding and attempts to meet Sonny halfway. Sonny often misunderstood or unheard is shaped to be a character who craves change. Although he craves it, he succumbs into drug addiction that keeps him stuck but grows into someone willing to make a major change by the end. He begins in the story as a musician with a bad drug habit and is shown more and more to be so much more. He is a sensitive man who suffers just like the narrator as a black man in America, but channels his suffering through his music as a means to help himself control his life and expressing himself. Through suffering depending on how characters accept it determines who they are as a person, and