Sonny's Blues Literary Analysis

Passion and ambition are the most human of emotions. Dreams separate those who can see where they must go from those who wander aimlessly through life in a simple and intrinsically animal pursuit of living. Without desire, or want humans would never have transcended their anatomy to build amazing skyscrapers, 3 million kilogram rockets and amazing ways of enjoying life. However, the urge to live necessarily prevents people from throwing themselves into their passion, no matter how much love they hold for it. People who refuse to accept the truth of the world and cannot integrate normally must find their own way back into real existence, or simply wallow away in the misery of chasing an unattainable dream forever. While at first it seems the narrator of “Sonny’s Blues” does the right thing by accepting his brother …show more content…
The guilt of the narrator present in the first few pages of Sonny’s blues indicates the sense of wrong that rejecting Sonny entails for the narrator. Sonny suddenly becoming real and causing a “great block of ice” to settle in the narrators self, and sending “shivers of doubt” evokes feelings of the narrator being morally wrong or twisted because of some incorrect action that the narrator took. However, in fact, the narrator is blameless for the downfall of Sonny. The nature of the narrator’s feelings of remorse lies in the promise he made to his mother before she died in which he promises, “I won't forget. I won't let nothing happen to Sonny” (Baldwin 11). This seemingly simple promise made to the narrator’s mama spins out of control because the Narrator cannot be there for his brother while he is fighting in a war. Despite the narrator’s best efforts to take care of Sonny by housing him with Elizabeth’s family, Sonny himself