James Baldwin’s Sonny’s Blues

James Baldwin’s “Sonny’s Blues” and Joyce Carol Oates’s “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” distinguish between different forms of societal influence. “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” demonstrates Connie’s (protagonist) innocent arrogance towards her surroundings. However, Baldwin maintains narrator whose interest and judgment remain shadowed by ignorance. The contrast between both novellas lies in Connie’s arrogance and John’s ignorance. Both these short stories are thematically similar in that Baldwin and Oates reinforce the lack of communication between family members. Baldwin writes “Sonny’s Blues” in fragmentized collages of misery and experience molded into Sonny and the narrator’s perspective of him whereas Oates’s description of clouded judgment reflects the tone of the narrator and the effect it has on Connie. The narration style in both these short stories is reminiscent of deliberately created perspectives. Also, the compelling notion that these protagonists are themselves symbols and irrevocably signify those easily inflicted by societal threat is maintained by Baldwin and Oates spectacularly. Baldwin and Oates use narration to represent societal temptation by introducing complex elaborative diction versus constraint straightforward language. Vices in context to these short stories characterize a grave moral failure. Vices often reflect the presence of a forthcoming restriction and the structure between these stories are reminiscent of that restriction. Restriction not implying withholding of form and reducing structure to reflect a certain meaning, but rather the result of how the narrators feel; therefore, becoming the vice (consider for example how in “Sonny’s Blues” Baldwin turned music into the narrator’s vice—a different medium of expression unfamiliar to the narrator). The final summation in these two short stories is the same in such a way that the threat becomes the lack of communication and is prevalent throughout both stories as a crucial theme. Due to the variety of possible analyses regarding the similarities between these two short stories, the underlying prevalent themes at work concern the characterizations of societal temptations, vices, and threats in relation to narration, structure, and theme respectively that describe why Baldwin’s narrator and Oates’s June were successful in overcoming social menace while Sonny and Connie were placed put under submission by social menace.

In both stories, narration becomes a key component in describing societal threat. Baldwin uses narration differently from Oates in that his approach is a more personal depiction of social menace whereas Oates illustrates a detached narrative perspective. In “Sonny’s Blues”, John is characterized as a self-absorbed individual. For instance, long before the narrator introduces who exactly Sonny is, the narrator expresses himself in the subjective I form countless times. Baldwin creates an interesting narrator when he states, “I couldn’t believe it: but what I mean by that is that I couldn’t find any room for it anywhere inside of me,” (Baldwin 92)—evidently, Baldwin creates a confused and uncertain narrator, which contributes to Baldwin’s narrative strategy (the reader is not quite sure exactly what to make of the narrator). Unlike Oates’s narrator, the tone is much more straightforward. For example, the detached narrator says, “and the rest of the time Connie spent around the house—it was a summer vacation” (Oates 38). In “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” the narrator draws attention to exactness precision. This exactness is reflective of Connie’s behaviour seeing as how she is merely fifteen years old and quite ignorant of her circumstances. However, narration-wise, “Sonny’s Blues” fulfills a narrator whose insight is elaborative and non-restrictive entirely of ignorance, yet that ignorance is foreshadowed in Sonny. This occurs when the narrator states carelessly, “I was trying to remember everything I’d heard about dope addiction and I couldn’t help watching Sonny for signs” (Baldwin 97). Consequently, because of his ignorance towards Sonny, readers are left with a dramatic monologue-like representation of the narrator depicted as an absorbed controlling individual. For instance, Baldwin’s narrator says, “I simply couldn’t see why on earth he’d want to spend his time hanging around nightclubs, clowning around on bandstands, while people pushed each other around a dance floor” (Baldwin 101). On the other hand, Connie in “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” is given a detached narrative sympathy—“Connie liked the way he was dressed, which was the way all of them dressed” (Oates 42). Due to the subject matter of “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” Oates justifies Connie’s actions in detached narrative tone to emphasize Connie’s simplicity whereas Baldwin in “Sonny’s Blues” uses elaborative syntax to develop John’s confused mind state.

Narrative syntax, structure and vices become symbolic probable assertions by Baldwin and Oates in these two short stories. An author’s decision to create a distinct stylistic narrative prose adversely affects the structure of a story. For instance, Baldwin creates “Sonny’s Blues” as though it were a structural mimic of Sonny as a character. Thus, Baldwin creates a narrator who simply cannot perceive Sonny adequately and adversely creates an ill-informed narrator. Hence, the structure becomes a vice for the narrator because of his reluctance to move shape into the structure. Blues music in “Sonny’s Blues” is symbolic because of its background relating to the casual undertones of vernacular language and its attempt to inform communities tainted by mishap. Thus, the structure of a blues piece is non-coordinated and therefore lacks a defined structure. This deliberately masterminded structure becomes a vice for the narrator because of his lifestyle as an ordered individual—the structure is endearing in that the narrator, as an algebra teacher (math symbolizes order and the narrator functions under mathematical constants) fails to realize Sonny does not conform to order and because the structure is a depiction of variables incalculable by math, the narrator lacks a thorough understanding of Sonny. For example, when the narrator writes a letter to Sonny, the narrator says in very factual pretenses, “Here’s what he said” (95), whereas, in the letter, Sonny writes with emotional undefined vernacular structure: You don’t know how much I needed to hear from you. I wanted to write you many a time but I dug how much I must have hurt you and so I didn’t write. But now I feel like a man who’s been trying to climb up out of some deep, real deep and funky hole and just saw the sun up there, outside. I got to get outside. (Baldwin 95) The resultant factor is the meaning gained from these structural formalities Baldwin constructed to reflect the narrator’s lack of understanding and his ill-informed interpretation of his brother Sonny. However, in “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” Oates establishes a character different from the stiff structure of the short story. For instance, the structure of “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” is precisely organized including the narrative perspective. Oates deliberately created a narrator who simply stated the facts of Connie’s situation without the excess elaboration to reinforce a fixed structure on a sporadic mind. Consider when the narration already begins directly and straightforwardly with, “Her name was Connie” (Oates 34) explicitly intending an ordered precise introduction whereas Connie’s vernacular attraction to Arnold Friend is reminiscent of her age, “‘Don’tcha wanta see what’s on the car? Don’tcha wanta go for a ride?” (Oates 42). For Connie, the structure becomes a vice and she is entrapped as a result because of the third person limited omniscient narrative strategy employed by Oates rather than first person subjective narration; hence, reducing sympathy and stating the blatant facts as if recounting a case a log. These structural vices become a deliberate tool Baldwin and Oates equally utilize to reflect narrative and character traits. Baldwin’s narrator and Oates’s June did not follow the structures of their respective short stories unlike Sonny and Connie and so they were successful in overcoming social menace.

Thematically, both these two stories share the ideal problem of communication. This is reflected in the straightforward prose of Oates “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?”; for example, readers are already aware that “Everything about [Connie] had two sides to it” (Oates 36) and “Connie wished her mother was dead and she herself was dead and it was all over” (Oates 35). Oates already reveals to the reader the nature of Connie’s fragility. The narrator in “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” states, “If June’s name was mentioned her mother’s tone was approving, and if Connie’s name was mentioned it was disapproving” (Oates 38) already creates the atmosphere of rejection and alienation which is sociologically a perfect standpoint that could potentially develop vulnerability. This vulnerability is emphasized throughout the story with depictions of Connie looking into the eyes of Arnold Friend: “He grinned so broadly his eyes became slits and she saw how think the lashes were, thick and black as if painted with a black tarlike material” (Oates 45). Arnold in “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” symbolizes the persona of social menace. His seduction and his overcoming of Connie’s innocent fragility contribute greatly to her lack of success in overcoming the embodiment of social menace—Arnold Friend. Further depictions of social menace is shown when the narrator says about Arnold Friend, “His sunglasses told nothing about what he was thinking” (Oates 45)—Oates depicts social menace as cowering behind the blackness of Arnold’s glasses and that social menace can strike at any instance. Communications occurs best when there is some kind established bond and in both stories that foundation is a lacking presence in both families. In “Sonny’s Blues” the foundation for communication to gradually build up is also lacking. The narrative form is reminiscent of this lack of communication. The narrator in “Sonny’s Blues” uses sharp diction to reinforce his lack of communication with his imprecise vernacular brother Sonny. Considering the approach the narrator uses when talking to Sonny, there seem to be times when the narrator is reluctant to speak to him and that the narrator seeks a third party to get insight from him: “I read about it in the paper” (Baldwin 91) and “I read about Sonny’s trouble in the spring” (Baldwin 105). The crater separating Sonny and the narrator is so very large that the narrator cannot simply approach Sonny with the questions he wishes to ask. Darkness is a recurring theme throughout “Sonny’s Blues”. Strategically, Baldwin creates a neighborhood ridiculed with dark valleys and aisles similar to the analogy Oates used to convey Arnold’s social menace: “So we drove along, between the green of the park and the stony, lifeless elegance of hotels and apartment buildings, toward the vivid, killing streets of our childhood” (Baldwin 96). Similarly, music is equally mentioned throughout both these stories as a medium of escape. Oates’s Connie listens to Bobby King, a Jazz melodist whereas Baldwin’s Sonny beautifies the improvisation of blues tradition. Music and gripping blackness of social menace are repeated motifs throughout both these two short stories and they explain why exactly June and the narrator of “Sonny’s Blues” have overcome social menace whereas Sonny and Connie, because of neglect and alienation, have fallen victim to social menace.

A thorough analysis of Baldwin’s and Oates’s short stories reveal that social temptations, vices and threats comparatively with narration, structure and themes respectively explain why June and Baldwin’s narrator triumphed over social menace while Sonny and Connie were enveloped by it. Narrative style contributed greatly to the accurate depiction of social temptations in that Baldwin used a precise narrator lacking emotion whereas when viewed through Sonny’s perspective, Sonny engaged in emotional discourse. Similarly, Oates utilizes an inadequately intellectually developed teenager with a harsh unsympathetic narrative style to further emphasize the nature of the subject. Structurally, Baldwin utilizes disorder and non-chronological depictions of Sonny’s lifetime into a theatrical blues representation which adversely affects the narrator’s misunderstanding of Sonny. Oates’s structural use of “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” depicted a fixed unchanging chronological ordered story for an individual lacking a sense of order, that is Connie—a fourteen year old girl. Like- mindedly, Baldwin and Oates establish a structural vice incomprehensible by the Baldwin’s narrator and Oates’s Connie. As a summation of structural and narrative styles, threats and its relation to theme tie closely together in these two short stories. The threat for both Sonny and Connie become neglect and the resultant factor is alienation from family which preludes to lack of communication—all viable themes in both these stories. Simply, the young male and female protagonists fall victim to societal threats because of their driven alienation from their families and from their closest friends and relatives which later develops a sense of vulnerability. Social menace occurs when one is gravely vulnerable of which Baldwin and Oates spectacularly depict.

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