Rosales 1

Jamel Rosales

Professor Wilson

English 123

18 February 2018

Death, Time, Love

James Baldwin emphasizes three themes: death, time and love throughout his short story

“Sonny’s Blues.” Death is a phenomenon that nobody can quite understand. It makes people

open up their eyes to the fact that time is limited. Time is a gift that should never be taken for

granted, especially with the people in our lives that we love. Love, a dubious subject, is a subject

that brings people together for the better. Do these three themes serve as a symbol that brings

people together, or do they symbolize separation and abandonment of loved ones? Death, time

and love are constantly reiterated in “Sonny’s Blues” as a way to highlight that these three

themes symbolize unity, support and togetherness in the narrator and Sonny’s family, although

some may argue differently.

Growing up in Harlem, the brothers succumbed to different influences. Some worse than

others, which Sonny got himself into. Due to Sonny falling to the rough streets of Harlem and his

new addiction to hardcore drugs, he found himself in jail for many years. On the other hand, the

narrator in to more beneficial influences which ended up landing him a job as a high school

teacher. The two completely different paths that the brothers took made them drift apart, farther

and farther as time went on. The narrator tells Sonny’s friend, “Look. I haven’t seen Sonny for

over a year, I’m not sure I’m going to do anything. Anyway what the hell can I do?” (Baldwin

69) The narrator knows that Sonny has been in jail, but he does not bother to stop by to check up

on him. Their relationship continues to diverge as the narrator thinks that visiting Sonny won’t
 Rosales 2

have a purpose or mean something to his brother. As time passes by, he grows more hesitant on

what he wants to do for Sonny to help him out. This will inevitably lead to the narrator not

offering a helping hand or to even pay Sonny a visit out of respect. The dilemma that the narrator

puts himself in emphasizes how he does not have enough love for Sonny to where he doesn’t

even support him at a low point in his life.

Sometimes love and support is all an individual really needs to get themselves back on

their feet. People should always show love and support, especially to their immediate family

members. This is something the narrator fails to show his brother. He abandoned Sonny as if he

had no hope for him and his future. Another important person in Sonny’s life that didn’t show

love and support like Sonny would have wanted was his father. The narrator explains that

He and Sonny hadn't ever got on too well. And this was partly because Sonny was the

apple of his father's eye. It was because he loved Sonny so much and was frightened for

him, that he was always fighting for him. It doesn’t do any good to fight with Sonny.

Sonny just moves back, inside himself, where he can’t be reached. But the principal

reason that they never hit it off is that they were so much alike. (74)

There is a difference between loving somebody, and actually showing it. His father loves him so

deeply that he is scared for what he may become or end up doing, which ends up being the

reason why their relationship perishes. He fears for him because Sonny is so much like his father

inside and out, which leaves his father frightened because he knows what Sonny wants to do and

what his motives are. This causes his father to not treat him the way a caring father should even

though he has an immense amount of love for him. Sonny’s father was like this because he had a

brother who he saw get killed at around the age Sonny was, and his father never recovered from

it until the day he died.

 Rosales 3

Sonny’s uncle’s death had a major impact on the way his father treated him, leading to

their unstable relationship. In a story their mother told the narrator just before she passed away,

their father claimed “he heard his brother scream when the car rolled over him, and he heard the

wood of that guitar when it give, and he heard them strings go flying and he heard them white

men shouting, and the car kept on a-going” (77). Their father was left traumatized after that night

out with his brother. He fails to treat Sonny like his other son because in his father’s situation,

Sonny is the little brother who was killed to where the narrator is the father, age-wise. This is

why his father is so hard on Sonny which pushes their relationship to the edge. He doesn’t want

Sonny to live a short, meaningless life full of bad decisions. He especially does not want his son

to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, like his brother was. It can be tough love, but there is

a line between tough love and pushing someone away which his father crossed. This is the story

that went untold until their mother thought it was necessary just before she died.

The mother’s death was a spark that caused the narrator to want to be a part of Sonny’s

life. She is who helped unify them and made the narrator want to support Sonny after all they

have been through. Before their mother passed away, she told the narrator the story of his uncle,

and made him promise to look after Sonny when she is no longer there to do so. She told him the

story because “you got a brother. And the world ain’t changed” (77). She wanted the narrator to

realize that, what happened to his uncle can happen to Sonny if he is not there to look after him

and influence him in the right way to make good decisions. She claims that the world has not

changed from that horrific moment their father experienced, it is still a dark and cruel world that

they live in. His mother made clear to him that “You may not be able to stop nothing from

happening. But you got to let him know you’s there” (78). The narrator knows now that being

there for his little brother is the most important thing, and it is the dying wish from his mother to
 Rosales 4

carry out. He knows it is okay if he can’t always make Sonny do the right thing, but as long as

Sonny knows that he has a brother who cares for him, that is what means the most to him. They

both don’t have much family left in their lives, just eachother and the narrator’s wife Isabel. The

narrator had a young daughter, Gracie, but she died as well, which prompted the narrator to reach

out to his brother for this first time in awhile while he was in jail. He finally reached out to

Sonny because Gracie’s death made him realize that important people in his life can be gone

instantaneously. So that moment made him want to reconnect with his brother and cherish the

future moment they will possibly share. Their mother isn’t there to look after Sonny, so now it is

the narrator’s responsibility to look after his little brother.

As time went on, the narrator learned to take on the role as a big brother and it helped

shape his relationship with Sonny. After Sonny got out of jail, his brother “already decided that

he’d have to move in with Isabel and her folks” (80). The narrator thought this was the best

decision for Sonny as he would take the time to gather himself with his music and his school.

The narrator also made this decision as a way to bring together his brother and his wife, the only

family he has left. They were all finally together, but then Sonny disappeared to the Navy with

no warning. Time went on with no word of Sonny until one day he sent his brother a postcard

from Greece. Years later when the war was over, Sonny and his brother met back up in New

York. Sonny would “come by the house from time to time, but we fought almost every time we

met” (83). Although the brothers still fought, they were still a family because he would drop by

to visit his brother and Isabel. It took time, but Sonny and his brother learned to be brothers and

establish that connection in their relationship that they never had.

The narrator and Sonny finally learned to love each other over time, but there were still

fights between them. They had an ugly fight where Sonny stated to his brother that “he was dead
 Rosales 5

as far as I was concerned” (83). Sonny shut the door after the confrontation and the narrator

“stood in the hallway, staring at the door. I heard somebody laugh in the room and then the tears

came to my eyes” (83). The narrator truly cares about Sonny and what is going on in his life

because he started to cry when Sonny didn’t want him in his life anymore. He learned to love

somebody that he never really cared about, and that brought him closer to his promise that he

made to his mother. He remembered that his mother told him to “hold on to your brother, and

don't let him fall, no matter what it looks like is happening and no matter how evil you gets with

him" (77). She teaches him about unconditional love. The narrator learns how he has to care for

his brother even when they are on bad circumstances because that is what family does and that is

the promise he made with his mother.

Death, love and time is the theme of “Sonny’s Blues,” and it can be debatable if this

theme plays a unifying or a separating role. Throughout the story, we see that death, love and

time both push families apart as well as bring them closer than ever. There are arguments for

both sides, but in the most heart-wrenching parts of the characters lives, we see that death, love

and time play a bigger unifying role than separating. The unifying moments were of greater

magnitude than the little controversies they went through which makes the unifying moments

more of the focus of “Sonny’s Blues.”

In the essay “James Baldwin’s ‘Sonny’s Blues’: Complicated and Simple” by Donald C.

Murray, he talks about Baldwin’s emphasis on the idea of man’s struggle to find his own

identity, as well as it being a main societal issue. Growing up in the ghetto of Harlem, the

narrator and his younger brother Sonny were at a disadvantage with all of the social influences

lingering around. Murray states that “it’s simpler to submerge oneself in middle-class

conformity, the modish antics of the hipster set, or else, at the most dismal level, the limbo of
 Rosales 6

drug addiction, rather than to truly find oneself” (353). Murray believes that it is easier for a

child to go along with what they believe society wants them to be, or get caught up with drugs

rather than figuring out who they want to become. It is difficult for a naive child to say no to

influences they are interested in because they don’t know any better, and sometimes they don’t

have someone to tell them what is right from wrong. The man’s struggle to find his own identity

continues to be a societal issue because of the social influences that infect their minds from a

young age, and the lack of support from wiser minds to lead them in the right direction.

Words: 1951

Work Cited

Murray, Donald C. "James Baldwin's 'Sonny's Blues': Complicated and Simple." Studies in Short

Fiction, vol. 14, no. 4, Fall 77, pp. 353-57. EBSCOhost, 0-

search.ebscohost.com.library.4cd.edu/login.aspx?direct=true&db=a9h&AN=7151144&site=eds-

live.
 Rosales 7

Baldwin, James. “Sonny’s Blues.” Norton Introduction to Literature. 12thed., edited by Kelly J.

Mays, W.W. Norton, 2017, pp.67-93.