Juan Castiblanco AP Literature Sonnys Blues In Baldwins story, Sonnys Blues, the author describes his life and

the life of his brother, Sonny, emphasizing the struggles that the main characters in the story and how theres no way not to suffer. The author employs the darkness and light to signify danger and safety that the characters face respectively, which is usually accompanied by the safety of inside world and the threat of the outside world. The author combines the light and darkness motif, the idea of imprisonment v. freedom, and the concept of the outside world and the inside world to shape the characters of Sonny and The Narrator in a way that resembles the musical structure of the blues. Light and Darkness play a major role for the character and plot development in the story, showing the struggles that the characters face and the omnipresent fear of the world in which they live. Early in the story, the author makes a metaphor of to the destiny of a child where the darkness will eventually come, but the adults try to keep him in the dark. The metaphor is not necessarily meant for a child, as through out the story, the reader notices the light or brief happy moments of the characters; however, the characters realize that the darkness [i.e. suffering] is meant to come again, but everyone try all kinds of ways to keep from drowning in it, which is similar to the way that blues music in the real world and jazz music in the story help musicians find a way to avoid the darkness which falls on them. The idea of imprisonment and freedom refers to the way the characters in the stories are trapped physically and psychology. The narrator is trapped between the wall of his believes about jazz music and the wall of his love for his brother; meanwhile, Sonny

is trapped in the worry of relapsing, which would further imprison him, similar to the way in which he was trapped physically and psychology during his stay in Jail. Both characters are trapped physically in Harlem, a dark place from where Sonnys mom longed to escape; however, she and her children remained trapped here through out the story, along with the suffering it brings to Sonny, who tries to escape Harlem to avoid psychological imprisonment in the way of drugs, and the Narrator is confined in Harlem, a place with constant reminders of the threat of the world that surround him. The imprisonment that the characters faced relates to the structure of the blues, which like a poem, is imprisoned by a typical structure of 12 bars and a semi-malleable chord progression. The concept of the inside and outside world parallel the idea of light and darkness in the way that the inside world tends to be safe while the outside word is filled with threats. The author shows how the outside world contains various threats, such as drugs and death, while the inside world tends to be more safe, such as the way that the child inside a house is protected from the darkness outside; however, the real safety of the inside world is not actually physical, but rather psychological, as true safety rests upon the minds of the characters, portrayed by the way that the narrator attempts to stay inside his safe zone by not bringing his true emotions towards Sonny until the end of the story. The concept of inside and outside can be seen in blues and in the way that Sonny plays the piano, for it shows the internal distress of the musician to the outside world, which ultimate seems to act as a far of redemption for the musician, or in Sonnys case, as a way of redemption towards his brother.