Stephen Hamilton
Professor T. Clark
English 201
4 March 2008
“Sonny’s Blues” Authored by: James Baldwin
Drugs, Music, and Culture have interacted together in various heights of conflict and harmony throughout modern day music, affecting the creators and patrons alike. James Baldwin’s “Sonny’s Blues” is a depiction of this triangle of cultural relations that has affected three generations of America Culture. Sonny, a pathless protagonist of the story finds music as his aim of escaping society’s African American brutal oppression in the 1950’s. Sonny’s brother makes the claim, “But there’s no need…is there? In killing yourself?” (Baldwin 59) referring to Sonny’s drug use in his musical escapes while playing nightclubs as a pianist in Greenwich Village. In the story "Sonny’s Blues" Sonny's brother makes the inaccurate assertion Sonny wants to die; in reality Sonny’s is simply trying to escape society's oppression. While living with Sonny’s brother’s family, talking in the afternoon with the brothers alone for the night; Sonny was talking about using heroin, “…what heroin feels like-when it’s in your veins…It makes you feel-in control. Sometimes you have to have that feeling.” (Baldwin 58) The commentary prior elaborated this statement when examining the singing quartet on their street and the struggles they went through to be able to sing like that, referring to the pain and passion in their voices. This helped illustrate the conflict of the time – American Culture built around discrimination and limiting the African American inner-city culture. Sonny was using heroin to feel in control of what is going on around him because in reality, he was not in control what so ever. His path or ability to get out of the poor inner-city life was closed by the American Culture at the time. When people aren’t given control over their perceived destiny, people have to do something that gives them the feeling of control, weather real or induced through narcotics. Sonny and his brother had a long commentary discussing their lives and what they had been through; coming to the topic of suffering from oppression and economical stress. Talking about dealing with and absorbing the suffering, Sonny’s brother questions the ability to not suffer in their lives, spawning Sonny’s response, “I believe not…but that’s never stopped anyone from trying…has it?” (Baldwin 59) This clearly exposes Sonny’s stance on the issue of escaping society’s oppression of the African American Culture. Sonny was mixing drugs and music to create a feeling of actual pleasure, even accomplishment that he was doing something in spite of the brutal limits placed on his life and culture. When all normal routes and options to achieve this feeling are blocked or wiped away, some people can only see certain directions to gravitate towards to escape, for Sonny, it was music and the drugs that encircled it, to achieve his feeling of ecstasy. When a culture is completely cut off from reaching social levels in the society it belongs to or even receiving similar respect as the rest of the society, people of the oppressed culture still need the feeling of belonging to something greater than what they are actually being treated like. Sonny explains this very vividly showing the role of drugs as the catalyst of this feeling; “…When I was most out of the world, I felt that I was in it, that I was with it, really, and I could play or didn’t have to play, it just came out of me, it was there.” Sonny was only using heroin and performing music to escape his life of oppression by society. Sonny’s brother escaped the oppression by joining the Army and earned an education to teach in his home neighborhood of Harlem, Sonny’s only route he could find was music. The drugs were just a tool they used to make themselves feel in control of their situations, which was an excuse to be numb to the actual feelings of oppression and brutality that society was delivering on their doorsteps every day. The oppression of the African American Culture of the 1950’s baby-booming revolution was unmistakable by today’s pupils. The invisible ceilings that kept inner-city dwellers of housing projects at the bottom of society was brutally displayed and exposed in James Baldwin’s “Sonny’s Blues.” It is amazing Sonny and his people found the will to live and go on with life. The demonstration of cause and effect of oppression and drug use among poor African Americans in the slums of New York was not too far off from some similar problems faced in today’s Inner-City America. Sonny never wanted to die, at least, by the hand of his oppressors, but rather, escape and feel as though he had the reigns to his life and feel he actually could go and do what he wanted, knowing full well sober, that was next to impossible.