Symbolism and Imagery in Sonny’s Blues’ to Bring out Empathy (Essay Sample)

The use of Symbolism and Imagery in Sonny’s Blues’ to Bring out Empathy and understanding
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Apart from his other novels like ‘Go tell it on the Mountain’, and a collection of essays, it is this short story-Sonny Blues- that James Baldwin writing agility is best matched. Notably, his ability to bring out black identity and masculinity in the American literary culture. In this book, Baldwin discovers the likeliness of artistic worth growing from the use of drug then goes ahead to unearth the social and challengers it stimulates. This essay, therefore, is going to analyze how imagery and symbolism are used by the author in his book to explain empathy and understanding.
The story begins with the unnamed narrator riding the subway to school, reads a disturbing piece. The narrator’s fears and anxiety about the fate of his brother continue to grow as he exits the subway and approaches school. The narrator, an Algebra teacher, tries to come to terms with Sonny’s heroin addiction. The aspect of his brother being heroin addict is warmly connected with his disrupted adolescence in Harlem and his jazz music career. His needs to understand his brother Sonny is further affected by personal challenges, for example, his younger daughter’s demise, the mocking and cruel laughter of her students, and the encounter with Sonny’s friends who remind him about his imprisonment and their relentless demand for money wherever they meet him. Being unable to overcome his loss makes him realize the unpredictable needs and sorrows responses of his brother through music and drug addiction. Sonny’s experience manifestation resonates many features of the piece, signifying liberating integrity.
The sudden demise of a toddler, called Grace, symbolizes Sonny’s ability to come to terms with the loss of grace. Also, through the death of Grace, her father was able to empathize with and understand the aches and emptiness others face. Literally speaking, Sonny, metaphorically referred to as the lost child, is likely to recapture or regain his lost stature through music. The connotation that his name bares, his structural and thematic positioning in connection to Grace, the state of grace, the child, and his socially marginal sufferer ’s occupation and object of redemption, Sonny is given a Christ-like personality.
The narrator recalls their childhood personal lives. He categorically describes how loving, terrible, and alcohol addiction their father was. He went further to explain a broken relationship between Sonny and his father given their similarity characters of being private. He reminisces how the adults would brave the dusk and narrates how much they had suffered. They were scared and ambiguously understood they would be the one to bear the suffering at some point in time.
The narrator also remembers his mother telling him at his father’s funeral to be his brother’s keeper when she spoke to him about Sonny. The conversation between him and his mother shows clearly how his mother empathizes with Sonny’s condition. His mother starts by giving a story of her husband’s brother who was run on and killed by a drunken white man in a night out. The car incident caused a permanent trauma to the narrator’s father who watched the scene by the roadside. The point is, she reminds him of the need to promise to keep looking after Sonny because the world has not changed.
Surprisingly, the narrator overlooked the vow till his mother’s demise, when he returns from long absence to see Sonny. The narrator poor listening skills are seen when Sonny’s efforts to explain his passion for music fell on deaf ears, reasoning his brother is above jazz music. His listening skills are similarly put to the test when Sonny desperately explains his decision to leave Harlem and join him in the military. The insistence that Sonny should continue living with Isabel, his then- Fiancée, and her family portray the narrator as a person who lacks empathy and understanding about other people. He overlooked that Sonny was a grown-up person able to chat his path. This was evident when he explained his passion for jazz music.
Sonny’s independence is seen after he agrees to move in Isabel’s parents’ home. He plays strange music on the piano regularly, thus bringing tension in the home. Besides, they knew how important the piano was to Sonny, so could not dare interrupt his playing time. Ultimately, there was a letter of absenteeism from Sonny’s school. Isabel’s mother got the letter that explains Sonny was not attending classes. When confronted he accepts he spends most of his time Greenwich Village with other instrumentalists. There ensure an argument that made Sonny realize how important his music was to him, Sonny realizes how a bother he had become to the family. At that point, he took his luggage, records and left. Soon after things cool down Sonny and the narrator met again. Being his brother, he visits Sonny’s Greenwich Village residence, and they fight. This shows that the narrator neither empathize nor understands Sonny’s nonconformist way of life.
It is apparent in this text that Sonny’s childhood sets the pace for his old age. Notwithstanding, he is suitably understood as he grows old, he is a character that is very difficult to master. For example, he succeeds in his abstinence. However, his behaviors confirm his once addiction. Although his musical prowess, tied with the common intuition, is liberating, the transformative space in which the musicality is played is inaccessible. He is mainly troublesome and subtly provocative, but not harsh. His adolescent stage took toll of his adult life and foreshadowed his drug habit.
The narrator captures the death of his daughter from polio: one afternoon, she fainted choking. Being present by her side at the time of death, Isabel is got permanent trauma. The storyteller went through elaborate suffering he never had. The experience gives him a clear picture of his brother’s trial thus making him understand Sonny’s fate. He would follow with a letter as proof. It is two weeks since Sonny’s stay with his brother. He considers ransacking his little brother’s room, seemingly for medicine paraphernalia; however, a street revival happening outside disrupts him. There he sees three women and a man sing and testifies. The tone of one of the women is empathetically giving a short amnesty from the pain that befalls them. He could spot Sonny in the mass.
Sonny awakes to the room, applauding the beautiful voices, and the melodious tunes. He after that ask the storyteller enjoys artistic themes he plays. Recognizing the significance of the invite, the narrator accepts and join him.
What follows is a visit to a nightclub by Sonny and his brother where he is set to perform. Sonny is a darling of everyone at the club, and they accord him a lot of respect. He introduces his band to his brother. A fiddle player called Creole, could not hide his admiration and delight about Sonny’s kind support. The relater sat in one of the dark corners at the back ready to see his brother churn out instruments.
The band walks majestically to the bandstand as the spotlight shines on them. Creole introduces Sonny to his baby (the piano). They begin to play the music. Creole is the lead vocalist, directing his fellow band members, giving Sonny time to get his rhythms right. He is nervous in the first set but gains his composer in the second set. His artistic display of the instruments makes the storyteller, for the first time, understand his suffering. However, the w...