Sonny
Life in Harlem is so hard that all who live there need an escape in order to deal with the despair of their life there. In "Sonny's Blues" by James Baldwin, we are introduced into a family that is struggling against poverty, racism, and substance abuse. Sonny, the main character is trying to find a way to live in Harlem through two escapes; heroin and music. Through their eyes we get a glimpse of a life that sucks down all who grow up in it and only relinquishes them with reluctance, and never without leaving some part of that person behind. We are introduced to a few of the trials that Sonny and his family have faced. Through Sonny and his friends we see the drug abuse that plagues Harlem's children. Sonny also shows us what incarceration does to a family when he goes to jail for drug dealing. Sonny's father dies due to alcoholism and segregation, both of which limit the potential of those who live in Harlem. Lastly, through Sonny's brother, we are shown death which pulls down on a family and is difficult to recover from. Through Sonny we are sympathetic to these trials that we see through the whole book and we see that Sonny uses heroin to stand the suffering and hopelessness around him even though it is harmful to him.
In the middle of the book we are shown a man and two "sisters" who use singing and a street revival as a safer way to escape. They, like Sonny's brother are trying to change something in other people that they couldn't in themselves. Sonny tells his brother that listening to the women singing feels the way heroin feels; "warm and cool at the same time... It makes you feel--- in control. Sometimes you've got to have that feeling." The narrator asks angrily if he needs that feeling to play music, not understanding what Sonny means. "It's not so much to play. It's to stand it, to be able to make it at all. On any level." He replies, "In order to keep from shaking to pieces." (p. 25) Sonny is talking about his music and heroin, but this is a good sentence to describe everyone who lives in Harlem's approach to life. Yes, the escapes they use are harmful. But like the feeling Sonny gets from heroin, they need to feel in control of something. They can't control their life anymore because so much is not up to them. The only thing they can control is what they put into their bodies, and what they put out of it. Most of the time they can't even explain why they do this to themselves. They're just trying to find some way "to keep from shaking to pieces." Sonny is talking to his brother and trying to explain why he used heroin. He gets frustrated and trails off until he simply says: "Sometimes, you know... it was actually when I was most out of the world, I felt that I was in it." (p. 27) life is filled with dangers like the ones in the paragraph above, but it is not only a danger to the body; (like the examples above were,) it is also a danger to the mind. The narrator and
Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 1129
Approximate Pages = 5 (250 words per page double spaced)
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