Empathy In Sonny Blues

The Narrator of Baldwin 's Sonny Blues tells the stories of his brother, his family, and his community in the Harlem neighborhood where he grew up. He gives the reader the sense that he is successful in comparison to his brother and the rest of people in his neighborhood, but he never tells his own story. The Narrator never even shares his name with the reader. In this way, the Narrator detaches himself from the tragedy surrounding him. He tells the story of everyone else’s tragedies and assumes the futures of other people experiencing similar tragedies, all while remaining divorced from the ways in which the tragedy impacts him. The Narrator tells these stories in such a way that encourages empathy in the reader, but remains emotionally detached …show more content…
This event was painful enough to bring the Narrator’s pain about his brother to the surface and he writes, “My troubles made his real.” The Narrator suddenly feels the reality of Sonny’s plight when he experiences his own agonizing loss. All the sorrow of his failures as a son and as a brother are abruptly present for him. The Narrator suddenly realizes that Sonny’s addiction was simply his way to escape from his own excruciating emotional pain. He is unexpectedly capable of real empathy for his brother’s experience, for all that his brother suffered in childhood, in the Navy, in life and connects Sonny’s addiction to the need to escape the pain of this suffering. The Narrator tries to go about his life as usual, but once his emotions came to the surface, it was very difficult for him to suppress them again. He had a window of opportunity in which he could capitalize on his new-found empathy and begin to process his own guilt and shame about his brother’s failures. But the Narrator squanders this opportunity and manages to suppress his emotions by looking at his students with judgment and believing they are doomed to the same fate as Sonny. He judges so he does not have to feel. Nelson Mandela said, “To be free is not merely to cast off one’s chains, but to live in a way that respects and enhances the freedom of others.” The Narrator of Sonny’s Blues is not able to find freedom. He fails to cast off his chains and he wastes his prospects of developing real empathy or compassion. It is safer to judge, but he must push the boundaries of safety and become vulnerable in order to find