Sonnys Blues

Halet Tesfaye

English 1110

Dr. Ladin

Sonny's blues essay

In the story of "Sonny's blues" by James Baldwin many things are discussed. Some of them are not refer clearly you have to dig deep to understand and some of them are just clear and right in front of your face. One of the things that is mentioned In Baldwin's writies around the last paragraphs is about "cup of trembling" connected to the book of Isaiah he did that because Baldwin was a preacher in his early days. Now the question is what does the cup of trembling has to do with sonny's blues and what do trembling means. In the book of Isaiah trembling is referred as great suffering and I think Baldwin connected this to the story of his life Sonny's life and his mom's life and his community's life to that scripture story.

When we look at Sonny, he has particularly has gone through a lot of suffering stating getting caught for smoking heroin and getting thrown in jail to seeing his father torment by the memories of his brother because his brother was one day walking at night with him and as he was crossing the road a group of white people in the car drunk run him over and left. That left his dad great physical and mental anguish and hate for white people. This hatred also is found in Sonny's mom she also suffers from the harshness of life in Harlem and she know that Sonny feels this suffering strongly than anyone else.

In "Sonny Blues" a man finally understands the suffering that his brother is going through and finally appreciates the music that his brother method to come those blues.