Sonny Blues

James Baldwin, author of the story "Sonny Blues," focuses the contrast of light and darkness as symbolic meaning toward the relationship and the lifestyle of the two characters, the narrator and his brother Sonny. The story begins with a metaphorical passage; "I stared at it in the swinging lights of the subway car, and in the faces and bodies of the people, and in my own face, trapped in the darkness which roared outside." The narrator here was speaking about Sonny's arrest, how the lights in the subway related to the light imagery because the lights in the subway were very dim which correlated to how Sonny's one bright future had become very dim. The symbolic meaning of the swinging lights allowed him to continue, while the darkness represents the life on the streets in Harlem, where there is little escape from the reality of life, discrimination, drugs and violence. This is a foreshadowing image. The traditional meaning of the contrast between light and dark directly relates to the lives of the two brother's in Sonny's Blues because they, in many ways, reflect the brothers themselves by illustrating Sonny as the dark and the narrator as the light by highlighting and comparing the decisions the brothers made.