"Sonny's Blues" Essay

An essay that tries to prove how the unnamed narrator in "Sonny's Blues" is a dynamic character.

Is the Unnamed Narrator in “Sonny’s Blues” a Dynamic Character?

    “Sonny’s Blues” is a story about a man who is looking for redemption in his life and finds it by reconnecting with his brother. Some readers believe “Sonny’s Blues” is about two brothers that try to escape their suffering in different ways. Other readers believe it is a story about a man that improves himself significantly. I will prove that the unnamed narrator is a dynamic character by citing specific quotations from “Sonny’s Blues”. I will explain how the narrator evolves his relationship with his brother, comes to terms with his own pain, ends his class bias, learns to be free, improves his communication skills, and stops judging others.

            I will first explain how the narrator evolves his relationship with his brother. After he hears about Sonny’s arrest he says to Sonny’s friend “ ‘Look. I haven’t seen Sonny for over a year. I’m not sure I’m going to do anything. Anyway, what the hell can I do”(pg.51)’? When the narrator says “’I’m not sure I’m going to do anything” this is important because at this point the narrator has given up on helping his brother. The language the narrator uses about helping his brother changes from the beginning when he says “what the hell can I do” to him saying “I had held silence-so long!”. He realizes Sonny has needed his help all along. The narrator says, “I realized with this mocking look that there stood between us forever, beyond the power of time or forgiveness the fact that I had held silence-so long!-when he needed human speech to help him” (pg.65). The words “human speech” are important in this quotation. When Sonny got arrested the narrator acted like Sonny was an animal that was being put down. Later when Sonny opens up to the narrator about his drug addiction the narrator looks at Sonny as a human being rather than subhuman.

Next I will explain how the narrator evolves himself by ending his class bias. Sonny’s job requires no preparation while the narrator’s job of teaching is all about preparation and the narrator resents this. Earlier in his life the narrator says, “I didn’t like the way he carried himself loose and dreamlike all the time, and I didn’t like his friends and his music seemed to be merely an excuse for the life he led. It sounded just that weird and distorted” (pg.62). The words “loose”, “dreamlike”, “weird” and “distorted” are important in this quote because it shows how the narrator is blindsided by his own way of thinking. As an algebra teacher, he thinks structure and organization are the only way to be successful in life. He gets frustrated at Sonny because Sonny has no planning or preparation in his life. He is always in a “dreamlike and distorted” state of mind according to the narrator.

The narrator hates jazz so much because he thinks the only way to be successful is through white-collar jobs. The narrator’s perception changes and realizes Sonny works at being a musician just as hard as the narrator works at being a teacher. When the narrator is at the nightclub he says, “And the face I saw on Sonny I’d never seen before. Everything had been burned out of it, and at the same time, things usually hidden were being burned in, by the fire and fury of the battle which was occurring in him up there” (pg.68). The narrator describes Sonny after his performance as “soaking wet,” and that tells the reader that the he appreciates the years of dedication that Sonny has put into his musical career. In this moment the narrator starts to look at Sonny as a different kind of man than he used to and his class bias of his brother stops.

The narrator also changes significantly as a character by acknowledging his own pain. The narrator sees how Sonny tries to get rid of his pain and sees the same traits in himself. When talking about Sonny’s arrest he says, “I couldn’t believe it:but what I mean by that is that I couldn’t find any room for it anywhere inside me (pg.49)”. Before Sonny’s arrest, the narrator thought of Sonny as being dead in the same way that he thought his pain was dead. When he says, “I couldn’t find any room for it anywhere inside me” is important because when he heard about Sonny’s pain his own personal pain came right back up to the surface and he wasn’t ready to face it. Only when the narrator acknowledges Sonny’s pain does he acknowledge his own. The change of language between these two quotes shows the evolvement of the narrator. The narrator said he “couldn’t believe it” in the first quote when talking about Sonny’s arrest. He didn’t want to deal with it. Then, when he’s at the nightclub he says he “felt my own tears begin to rise.” He deals with his pain instead of pushing it away. The narrator says, “And it brought something else back to me, and carried me past it. I saw my little girl again and felt Isabel’s tears again, and I felt my own tears begin to rise (pg.69)”. By reconnecting with Sonny the narrator reconnects with himself. This is the biggest change in the story for the narrator because by letting his “own tears begin to rise” he finally lets out his suffering.

The unnamed narrator changes himself in another way by finding his freedom and letting go of his anger. Sonny helps his brother become free at the end of “Sonny’s Blues” by acting like a religious figure in the eyes of the narrator. The narrator quotes “the cup of trembling” from a bible verse, Isaiah 51:15-22 in the last sentence of the story. The narrator is saying that Sonny paid for his sins so he doesn’t have to which is a reference to Jesus. When the narrator talks about his anger in the beginning of the short story the language he uses is much different than in the end of the story when he regains his freedom. In the beginning he says, “A great block of ice settled in my belly...sometimes it hardened and seemed to expand until I felt my guts were going to come spilling out or that I was going to choke or scream (pg.49)”. The narrator’s anger “hardened and seemed to expand” which means that it controlled him. When he hears Sonny play at the nightclub, he regains his freedom. He says, “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” (pg.69). The language in “Sonny’s Blues” changes to show the anger the narrator feels in the beginning compared to the freedom he feels at the end. When the narrator says, “I understood, at last, that he could help us to be free if we would listen,” this is the moment where he changes his ways. The narrator changes from being controlled by his anger to being free from it.

The narrator evolves as a person even more by improving his communication skills. In the beginning of his life the type of communication he had with Sonny strained their relationship. When Sonny was living a life the narrator didn’t approve of he said, “So I got mad and then he got mad, and then I told him that he might just as well be dead as live the way he was living” (pg.62). The narrator told Sonny “he might just as well be dead as live the way he was living” and that shows how much he needed to improve the way he expressed himself. Later, when the narrator talks to Sonny about his life he says “I just care how you suffer. Please believe me, I don’t want to see you-die-trying not to suffer (pg.65).” The language the narrator uses here is much different than the language he uses earlier. Earlier he told Sonny he “might just as well be dead.” But now when he’s talking to Sonny, he says “I don’t want to see you die.” Instead of the narrator losing his cool when talking to Sonny he shows the emotional intelligence he has gained in his life. This shows a big improvement in communication skills for the narrator.

The narrator improves himself as a human by ending his judgemental side. Early in “Sonny’s Blues”, when the narrator sees a barmaid working he judges what kind of person she is without even knowing her name. He says, “When she smiled one saw the little girl, one sensed the doomed, still-struggling women beneath the battered face of the semiwhore (pg.51)”. The narrator judges this woman by calling her  “doomed”, and a “semiwhore” without knowing her. Later in the story, the narrator ends his judgement when he sees two women at a revival meeting and says they are sisters just by being human. He says, “The woman with the tambourine, whose voice dominated the air, whose face was bright with joy, was divided by very little from the woman who stood watching her, a cigarette between her heavy, chapped lips, her hair a cuckoo’s nest, her face scarred and swollen from many beatings, and her black eyes glittering like coal.” (pg.63). He says that the religious women “was divided by very little from the woman who stood watching her” who was most likely a drug user. The narrator realizes that the relationship that these two women have is similar to the relationship Sonny and him have. He comes to the realization that he is his brother’s keeper. He finally sees that him and Sonny are two different people but they shouldn’t judge each other because they are human.

In conclusion, the moral of “Sonny’s Blues” is that sometimes you need to change your ways to become a more complete human being. It is very difficult for humans to change built in patterns and stereotypes. Would you be able to make the amount of changes that the unnamed narrator did in this story?