Sonny's Blues by James Baldwin

This week, I found reading Sonny’s Blues, by James Baldwin, to be really interesting. The story is about a mans’ struggle to deal with his younger brothers drug addiction.  Kenneth McClane introduces the story with his own personal accounts of dealing with a brother with an addiction and it took me reading through the entire story to understand a lot of what McClane is saying.  I have no personal experience being on such a strong drug and don’t know anyone who has so I could not relate with a story about addiction but have sympathy for those that have.  The quote that stuck with me the most is when Sonny is describing his feeling of what it is to be high.  He says, “Sometimes, you know, and it was actually 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 I didn’t really have to play, it just came out of me, it was there” (McClane 52).  The words are so powerful and can really put you in the mindset of someone on a strong drug like heroin.  

I am the youngest child in my family and could not imagine putting my older siblings through that kind of torment and worry.  Right before the main characters mother dies she says to him, “You got to hold on to your brother, and don’t let him fall, no matter what it looks like is happening to him and no matter how evil you gets with him” (McClane 42).  This is a lot of pressure being put on an older sibling to take care of their little brother and I think is part of the reason why the two go so long without speaking to one another.  The main character is appalled at the actions of his brother and feels as though there is no hope for him and therefore ends communication for a time.  I believe it is because he thinks he has failed his mother and has not kept his brother safe from the temptations of Harlem, the city they grew up in.  At the end of the story the main character seems to have this revelation, or realization of how his brother must have been feeling for all these years and the struggles that he has gone through.  As he watches Sonny up on stage playing the piano with the other men he thinks to himself, “I had never before thought of how awful the relationship must be between the musician and his instrument.  He has to fill it, this instrument, with the breath of life, his own” (McClane 54).  In some ways he could be making the relationship of instruments to drug addiction.  It seems as though the drug is what is making you alive but in reality it is the person that has the choice whether to make it take over your life or not. 

McClane picks out the quote, deep water and drowning are not the same thing, and adds that, “they can be.  And one can fall even further, farther” (McClane 31).  I still don’t quite understand this quote, but while it relates to addiction I can imagine that feeling as though you are stuck in deep water can be worse than drowning, not actually getting the relief you need.  Simply becoming stuck in one place in time.

Truculent (30): fierce, cruel, aggressively hostile

Environs (30): the surrounding parts or districts of a city, outskirts