James Baldwin - Annotation of Sonny's Blues excerpts lyrics

It was a special kind of ice. It kept melting, sending trickles of ice water all up and down my veins, but it never got less. 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. This would always be at a moment when I was remembering some specific thing Sonny had once said or done. I found this description his feelings to be important because the way that he describes his feelings are incredibly similar to the sensations that a h**n addict might experience. This correlates because he relates these to Sonny was an actual user of h**n. And he'd always been a good boy, he hadn't ever turned hard or evil or disrespectful, the way kids can, so quick, so quick, especially in Harlem His feelings towards his brothers behavior represent what he may have feared growing up in a community of the same bad habits being acquired by what seems like ma**es of inner city kids. was sure that the first time Sonny had ever had horse, he couldn't have been much older than these boys were now. “Horse”, a nickname referring to h**n because the effects it has on the body of the user, it kicks equines into hyper drive where as their normal functions are to calm and lull the body. These boys, now, were living as we'd been living then, they were growing up with a rush and their heads bumped abruptly against the low ceiling of their actual possibilities. In this line the author conveys a generational hold on the community, it can almost be described as sad imagery, he describes them being raised, rushed through their childhood into adulthood where they would only be stuck because now that they have grown up so uninformed of their purpose. They are now limited in their potential All they really knew were two darknesses, the darkness of their lives, which was now closing in on them, and the darkness of the movies, which had blinded them to that other darkness, and in which they now, vindictively, dreamed, at once more together than they were at any other time, and more alone. In this excerpt its conveyed that in this in area with this body, there were no positive outcomes, it was a decision in which they chose the lesser of two evils the first being the realism of their sorrow whether they saw it or not and the second being the stereotype that the author describes as the lesser evil, perhaps the most dangerous one because it has more of an effect. It was not the joyous laughter which-God knows why-one a**ociates with children. With this line it seems as if the author believes the children are not as children, he asks why laughter would be related to the children, THESE children. Perhaps I was listening to them because I was thinking about my brother and in them I heard my brother. And myself. It seem as if in this instance the narrator has a constant good/ bad recollection and he often refers to him in a youthful time frame and when he says, “and myself”, it seems as if he's admitting Sonny effected in their youth. It made him repulsive and it also brought to mind what he'd looked like as a kid. /When she smiled one saw the little girl, one sensed the doomed, still-struggling woman beneath the battered face of the semi-who*e These two lines are at different places in the story, but they represent a sort of parallel from the narrator as he compares the likeness of these two characters as children states their flaws into adulthood, by doing this he reiterates how he believes they were destined to be this way. All this was carrying me some place I didn't want to go. I certainly didn't want to know how it felt. It filled everything, the people, the houses, the music, the dark, quicksilver barmaid, with menace; and this menace was their reality. The narrator has come to the realization that he cannot escape the what has become of his community, it all seems to remind him of Sonny and it seems that he wanted to escape these reminders of how h**n has be instrumental in his life. Yet, as the cab moved uptown through streets which seemed, with a rush, to darken with dark people, and as I covertly studied Sonny's face, it came to me that what we both were seeking through our separate cab windows was that part of ourselves which had been left behind. The narrator has, for the first connected with Sonny, and while his emotions toward Sonny have had a negative connotation he now understands a part of Sonny because he saw him a vulnerable victim and just as drug addict. The beat-looking gra** lying around isn't enough to make their lives green, the hedges will never hold out the streets, and they know it. The big windows fool no one, they aren't big enough to make space out of no space. The narrator doesn't know to let go of his past he firmly that no matter what changes may come to the landscape the outcome the community will always be the same. The darkness outside is what the old folks have been /talking about. It's what they've come from. In all the references that the narrator brother makes in this instance, while talking about the still wonder of the old people he eludes to the black national anthem, “Sing a song full of the faith that the dark past has taught us”, this is especially interesting because of what he was describing before this line, which was the darkness outside (the past) that he was now thinking back now and now he didn't want it to be looked backed in the way in which it was. Mama said, "nor of his having good sense. It ain't only the bad ones, nor yet the dumb ones that gets s**ed under."/ I told myself that Sonny was wild, but he wasn't crazy. And he'd always been a good boy, he hadn't ever turned hard or evil or disrespectful, the way kids can, so quick, so quick, especially in Harlem. I'd already used the second line but when it placed alongside the first which is much further in the story than the second you can understand that Sonny's brother had not yet understood the capabilities of Harlem, but as an adult he understands the dramatic effects of Harlem and the damage or potential of damage Harlem represents and it has taken Sonny so abruptly because he didn't see it coming even when his mother warned I was sure that the first time Sonny had ever had horse, he couldn't have been much older than these boys were now. Throughout the story you can see how the narrator makes a lot of references to the he and Sonny's childhood almost in a bitter tone so here when he uses the word “horse” instead of h**ne it still seems as if he is speaking that bitter tone. "I just told you. To get out of Harlem." "Sonny, you haven't even finished school. I think this line represented an understanding of life for Sonny. The word' school' was italicized in the text which could mean a couple of different things but I think the author and more specifically the narrator were trying to get Sonny to understand that life hasn't taught enough, or that he hasn't experienced enough to be a full on musician Neither did they dare to make a great scene about that piano because even they dimly sensed, as I sensed, from so many thousands of miles away that Sonny was at that piano playing for his life. The significance of this line is that Sonny's brother has started, while in protest, to understand the nature of his brother's emotions and how his love for music is so much deeper and it puts so much more at stake for Sonny. Even if their fingers had been times more gentle than human fingers ever are, he could hardly help feeling that they had stripped him naked and were spitting on that nakedness. Throughout the story it does seems as if Sony is against everyone else from this father as a child to his brother as an adult a very sensitive person overall and the love he needs at this point was stripped from him emotionally especially from a woman given his mother had pa**ed. You going to need me, baby, one of these cold, rainy days. Sonny's brother at various points in the story takes on some of the responsibility of his brothers situation and when his brother closed the door on him and as he whistled this tune I believe he may have been eluding to the conversation he had had with his mother years before about he'd need to watch out for Sonny and as he whistles this tune to keep from crying he knows his love would and protection would be forever no matter. "Her voice reminded me for a minute of what h**n feels like sometimes-when it's in your veins. It makes you feel sort of warm and cool at the same time. And distant. And- and sure." It's not very often in this story that Sonny makes himself a center of vulnerability about his drug use and this line is an example of him conveying his pa**ion for music and how he used h**n to fill a void and in this moment he actually admits what h**n means to him and related this to his pa**ion for his music so that his brother can understand on a deeper level. You can't talk it and you can't make love with it, and when you finally try to get with it and play it, you realize nobody's listening. So you've got to listen. You got to find a way to listen." In this line I believe that Sonny was eluding a storm, which describes several painful events in his life how the ways society normally deals with trauma doesn't with this ‘storm' of life. He's making the point that nobody can help you deal with the pain inside, you've got to find way to manage the storm and make some sort of rhythm of the noise to gain peace.