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James Baldwin, "Sonny's Blues"

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Re-Reading Questions

Text on p. 91 of the full Ninth Edition and p. 41–65 of the shorter Eight Edition.

Re-Reading Questions

Note: Some of these questions require extensive answers to explore them fully. Therefore, you may either use some as brief prompts for your own thinking about the piece after reading the study materials or explore them in a paper.

1. As you re-read the story, examine the narrator more carefully. How is his response to Sonny shaped by his own set of goals, hang-ups, and responsibilities? Is he his "brother's keeper"? Should he be? Does the narrator make it possible for the reader to understand Sonny more sympathetically than he can? If so, how? Look in particular at each brother's take on the subject of suffering.

2. The story has many flashbacks and memories: the story of Sonny's high school friend; Sonny's dream of going to India; the brothers' drive through their childhood neighborhood; their father's attitude; the old folks at Sunday dinners; their mother's death; their mother's story of their uncle's death; the brothers' relationship after their mother's death; and Sonny's life after he left Isabel's. How do each of these memories help you understand the present action? Look at parallels between both sets of brothers and the promises the narrator and Sonny make.

3. Light and darkness are woven together throughout the story. They begin with the narrator's awareness of the "darknesses" that fill his students as they rage against "the low ceiling of their actual possibilities" and end in the final paragraph, with the glow of the drink in the darkness. Trace the images of light and darkness throughout the story, paying special attention to the characters' dark skin and its limiting effects in the white world outside of Harlem.

4. Music is key to this story, particularly jazz. Re-read these passages: the whistling boy; the dancing barmaid; the father's brother and his guitar; Sonny's decision to be a musician; Sonny and his piano practice; the singing of the revival meeting; the relationship between music, drugs, and suffering; and the final nightclub scene. What does music express for the people of Harlem? For Sonny? For the narrator at different points in the story? Why is the story called "Sonny's Blues" when the music Sonny plays is jazz?

5. Re-read the final two paragraphs of the story. What has the narrator learned? What have you, as a reader, learned?

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