Sonny Blues and The Lesson

Introduction

The paper aims to present a compare and contrast essay of the two stories Sonny Blues by James Baldwin (1957) and the Lesson by Toni Cade Bambara (1972). The content will cover the traits of the main characters of each story and observe the differences and similarities described by the respective authors.

Discussion

Sonny's Blues, which appears with Baldwin's other major stories in the 1965 collection 'Going to Meet the Man', has been generally singled out as the best of the author's attempts at short fiction. “Sonny's Blues,” Harry L. Jones writes, is the most perfectly realized story in the collection, that is, if one is operating in a scheme that insists on a cyclical structure and a fitness of the formal elements to the whole. There is nothing wasted in the story; even the flashback is structural. Albeit leisurely paced, the story does move from situation, complication, climax, to denouement. While there is some problem with the realization of the character of the narrator, even he is more fully presented than many of the other characters in the short works, and since he serves as a foil to Sonny, the narrator functions well largely because Sonny is so fully developed.

Sonny is the brother of the main character of the story, the narrator. He is presented as an introspective person who is quiet and has a tendency to go into a withdrawal within himself. Another trait described about this character is that he is considered as wild, but not crazy. He is an addict to drugs like heroin which fleas him to jail. However, his passion for jazz ends up for him to become a musician.

“Sonny's Blues” is the narrator's story. Its focus is on his slow and painful process toward awareness, self-discovery, and involvement. The younger brother, Sonny, is both the object and the means of that quest. By understanding the meaning and significance which Sonny attaches to his music, and the reconciliation which the process of understanding makes possible, the narrator is able to come to grips with and discover himself. The narrator, a college graduate with a respectable teaching career, has adopted a way of life, and a set of values, expectations, and attitudes, which isolate and distance him from the realities (the “darkness”) of both his own racial heritage and the human condition in general. Sensitive and articulate as well as educated, the narrator, in ...