Sonny's Blues and Big Black Good Man - Essay Example

This paper endeavors to tackle the different significant points in both aforementioned short stories. It also aims to discuss the variations in both literary works. The story entitled, Sonny's Blues by James Baldwin, is a tale inscribed in the first-person singular narrative style. It commences with the narrator reading about his younger brother named Sonny who has been seized in a heroin bust. The narrator then recounts about the events of his day; he is a professor at a school in Harlem. However, he is having trouble of getting his mind off Sonny.

He imagines all the boys he is teaching in class who he supposes does not have a bright future and probably doing drugs just like Sonny. After school, he came across a friend of Sonny who informs him that they will put him up in jail and put him in rehab but eventually he will be set free and hence, be all alone. Originally, the narrator does not have any contact with his brother Sonny not until his daughter Gracie passes away due to polio when he decided to write him a letter. Hence, they eventually re-established their means of communication and somehow got updated with each other’s lives.

When Sonny was set free from jail, he then resided with the narrator who is his brother. The two brothers then had a flashback of their parents. The narrator depicts his father as a drunken man, who passed away when Sonny was fifteen. Sonny and his father had the same solitude; however they did not get along. Sonny was an introvert and usually quiet; while their father acted as if he was immense, resilient, and loud-talking. They also reminisced the time of their mother’s funeral where the narrator had a talk with Sonny asking him what he aims to do with his life.

Sonny replied that he desires to be a jazz musician and to play the piano. The narrator does not appreciate this dream and does not believe that it is good enough for Sonny. They also discussed his living arrangement for the remainder of his high school days. This subject matter ignites the two brothers to be in an argument where Sonny calls his brother ridiculous for not knowing who Charlie Parker is, and contends that he does not want to finish high school or live at the house of the parents of Isabel who is the narrator’s wife.

However, they resolved the predicament with a compromise, since the house of Isabel’s parents had a piano; Sonny could play it whenever he wishes to provided that he will agree to go to school. It was then discovered that Sonny is not pursuing his studies instead he plays in the Greenwich Village with his jazz friends whom the narrator assumes that he is taking drugs with so Sonny left the house of Isabel’s parents and went to the navy. After the communication of the two brothers were re-established, Sonny arrives at the house, and asks the narrator if he wishes to come and watch him play in Greenwich Village, and the narrator, although reluctant at first, decides to go with Sonny.

Sonny then starts to narrate about his heroin addiction in somewhat vague terms. He divulges that when the lady that the brothers both admire was singing at the revival meeting, it prompted him to be reminiscent of what it feels like when heroin is gushing through one’s veins. Sonny declares that it makes an individual feel that he is in control, and sometimes a person just have to feel that way. The narrator inquires if he has to feel like that to play and he responds that some people do. They then tackled suffering and the narrator raises the question