"Sonny's Blues," and "This Evening, This Morning, So Soon": if I was forced to name the main theme of these two Baldwin short stories, I would probably say that Sonny's Blues is about the developing relationship between brothers, and "This Evening" is about the international effects of racism.
Yet in both stories, the struggle of the artist is also a key aspect. Sonny, a jazz pianist, and Unnamed Narrator, a singer and actor, both seek to overcome the boundaries of their situations as well as their personal limitations. In both stories, Baldwin provides a scene where we see the artist reach a sort of maturity, not only in music or acting but also a greater personal understanding.
Sonny has always felt trapped by the limitations of his neighborhood, Harlem. "Look, brother. I don't want to stay in Harlem no more, I really don't. (127)" touches off an exchange between Sonny and the narrator that has an undercurrent of anxiety on Sonny's part as he tries to justify his decisions to join the army and become a musician to his older brother. To Sonny, Harlem is not only where there the scent of trash, but also is where drug problems can easily trap him: "I couldn't tell you when Mama died-but the reason I wanted to leave Harlem so bad was to get away from drugs. And then, when I ran away, that's what I was running from-really," Sonny confides to his brother right after inviting him to come hear him play at a club.
In a way, Sonny never succeeds in physically escapes his situation; his drug problems return, culminating in his arrest and imprisonment. However, Sonny can escape into his music, as seen the final scene of the story, as he plays with Creole and the band. At first, he is channeling his own suffering to create something, and his music is a lament. Sonny comments earlier on hearing the voice of a women at the revival he and the narrator stop by, saying that "While I was downstairs before, on my way here, listening to that woman sing, it struck me all of a sudden how much suffering she must have had to go through-to sing like that. " Blues, after all, could mean either the type of music or hard times.
As the song reaches its climax though, Sonny's playing no longer becomes a lament, but instead an expression of freedom: "Freedom lurked around us and I understood, at last, that he could help us to be free if we would listen, that he would never be free until we did." In that moment where Sonny has "made it his," after not playing for a year, Sonny achieves a new sense of himself and narrator comes to understand his brother.
Comparing Sonny's struggle, the struggle of the Unnamed Narrator of "This Evening" resolves much faster, but it certainly isn't easy. After playing his character of Chico in a totally unconvincing way, Vidal pulls himself for a long discussion about the Narrator's empathy for Chico trying to get a job, which transitions into a discussion of race. The Narrator begins with a sort of brush-off attitude, satisfied with his own somewhat-cynical ideas about race, ("'Oh God, I said, 'please don't give me any of this equality-in-anguish business'") but Vidal shuts him down with the reality of French race ("You think that I--we--are not paying for our history?") As the Narrator is challenged to think about his own identity, he presumably develops the mindset that lets him give his star performance, just as Sonny's maturation allowed him to produce such powerful music.
What are your thoughts on the way artists are portrayed in Going to Meet the Man?
Another performer is Peter, from "Previous Condition." He's an actor, who turns down a role in Native Son because he doesn't want to play a stereotype. I think this is another interesting example of the way a person's art has an influence over their personal identities/struggles. We don't hear much else about his performances themselves, the fact that he's an actor mostly takes a backseat in the story, but it reminded me a little bit of the minstrel dynamic, that we discussed in African-American Lit. last year. Black people performing for the entertainment of white audiences can sometimes prove to be problematic -- and I won't go into depth on the subject, but Peter turning down the role in Native Son seems to be something he does to avoid becoming The Black Actor. He wants his performances to be separate from his racial identity. And in "This Morning, This Evening, So Soon," the narrator describes singing on the boat for a primarily white audience, and how aware he was of the dynamics: The white audience was relaxed, seeing him in that position -- an unthreatening performer, there for their pleasure.
ReplyDeleteI think a key point in "Sonny's Blues" was when the narrator just listened to Sonny play. He describes everything is bursting detail, so much that you can just about picture what is going on. The narrator in total spends about a page talking about how his baby girl died. That in itself could be a story, or that could be the main part of a story leading up to the reuniting of two estranged brothers, but here we are with about a page of detail about his daughter, but about 4 pages of details of Sonny playing. Grace was the catalyst for an event, but Sonny is what the narrator focuses on.
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