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Analysis of the sociocultural setting that Influenced James Baldwin’s Composition of "Sonny’s
Blues”
“Sonny’s Blues” is a short narrative composed by James Baldwin in 1957 before the
conclusion of the Harlem Renaissance. In the narrative, Baldwin uses two brothers, the Narrator
of the narrative, a teacher, and the protagonist, Sonny, the central character of the tale. He
demonstrates a life surrounded by struggle and sorrow. The Narrator is a teacher from Harlem
who escaped from a ghetto, establishing a secure and stable life, notwithstanding the destructive
pressures he witnesses rescinding several young Black lives. Specifically, the teacher views
African American teenagers as discovering the limits exerted on them by a racist social setting
during the same period when they learn their abilities. Specifically, the Narrator mentions that he
saw his “mother's face again and felt, for the first time, how the stones of the road she had
walked on must have bruised her feet (Baldwin 32). The Narrator offers a tale concerning the
association between himself and his brother Sonny, which has moved through different stages of
split-up and reunion. After the deaths of the two brothers' parents, the teacher tried to become a
father to Sonny but failed to believe that his brother had succumbed to Harlem's life's destructive
influences. However, the two brothers attain reconciliation, in which he acknowledges the
importance and value of Sonny's love for and need to become a jazz pianist. Through Sonny,
Baldwin presents a critical discourse of the struggles experienced by African Americans
belonging to the lower social class at the time. Baldwin’s point of view generally revolves

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around the theme of class supremacy and racial segregation stemming from the racism he
experienced within the context of the twentieth-century CRM (Civil Rights Movement) genesis
in which he penned his work.
Analysis of the Sociocultural setting that Influenced the Composition of Sonny’s Blues
One of the issues that influenced Baldwin in composing his works included the CRM
(Civil Rights Movement) that articulated black consciousness at the time. The CRM was a
movement between the 1950s and 1960s involving the struggle for social justice for Blacks in
the USA. Francis Baldwin is a mentor in the pains and misery experienced by African Americans
during the CRM period (7). The author offers significant insight into his life and that of the
African Americans during the CRM struggle and how these experiences relate to the social
segregation articulated in Sonny’s Blues. The CRM generally struggled for social equity through
regulations and policies since African Americans felt unjustly treated by laws meant to offer
equal rights to all citizens. In the narrative, the author articulates the issue of racism through
social segregation, which was one of the factors that motivated the rise of the CRM. Baldwin
witnessed the CRM after traveling through the Southern States. He experienced systemic racial
oppression and violence, including meeting the CRM leaders such as Dr. Martin Luther King and
Medgar Evers (Francis 7). In his travels, Baldwin experienced the violence associated with
killing young Black people, primarily due to systemic racism, which inspired the CRM struggle.
In the narrative, while the Narrator teaches, he hears laughter from the mainstream White culture
that is "mocking and insular, its intent was to denigrate” (Baldwin 2). Additionally, through the
Narrator, Baldwin emphasizes the challenges the CRM movement struggled with, including the
“vivid, killing streets of our childhood” the teacher talks about when he ultimately acknowledges
the danger his brother was attempting to escape from (Baldwin 8). Therefore, the struggles of the

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Civil Rights Movement played a significant role in influencing James Baldwin’s composition of
Sonny’s Blues to attribute to the audience the social inequalities and racial segregation
experienced by African American communities at the time.
Sonny's Blues' setting is predominantly Harlem, a region characterized by poverty, drugs,
and tension experienced by the author and other African Americans considered as a lower social
class population. In this context, the concept of social class significantly influenced the
composition of |Sonny's Blues. Specifically, most African Americans belonged to the lower
social class and experienced illicit drug problems that characterized the tension, poverty, and
violence stemming from racial segregation. The racial segregation at the time of Baldwin meant
that African Americans lived in ghettos instead of rich white urban settings. In the ghettos,
young African Americans were engaged in drugs to escape their suffering. Similarly, in Sonny's
Blues, James Baldwin uses the Narrator and the protagonist, Sonny, to express his point of view
concerning how drugs influenced young African American lives. Specifically, when the Narrator
drives through Harlem with his brother Sonny, young African American men are designated as
going to the streets for air lights "and air and found themselves encircled by disaster” (Baldwin
9). According to Gale, Sonny’s Blues’ setting involves events that carefully attribute the
suffering of African Americans living in slums and ghettos as a result of racial segregation
(Section 7). Gale contends that Baldwin uses two brothers to help the reader understand the lived
experiences of estranged Black families at the time.
James Baldwin was influenced by class supremacy, which resulted in social injustice and
racial segregation that propelled protests and riots in the ghetto during his upbringing to compose
Sonny's Blues. In particular, Baldwin grew up in Harlem and experienced the undesirably
terrifying realities associated with the ghetto: drugs, murders, robberies, and gangs. However,

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Baldwin was an outlier due to his intellect (Poetry Foundation). Indeed, Jones articulates
Baldwin as an artistic hero in African American literature (462). Baldwin’s heroism in Sonny's
Blues is grounded on his ability to become his audience's racial spokesperson. According to
Kowalska, James Baldwin's short narrative's positioning and point of view are grounded in
empathy following the author's hardship experiences (5).
Kowalska argues that Baldwin's narrative is a fictional text that examines humanity's
social concerns through the lens of the Narrator's lived experiences, including the emotional
problems experienced as Baldwin's living reality (5). In this context, Baldwin reflects on his drug
troubles, which greatly influenced his composition of 'Sonny's blues' (Kowalska 5). This
reflection is evident when the author uses the character Sonny to illustrate that African
Americans escaped the social segregation and economic suffering in the ghetto by engaging in
drug use and addiction as escapism. While the short story indicates that maintaining a young
black man's identity in Harlem at mid-century, along with the precise multiple losses and
troubling experiences faced by the protagonist and his family, Sonny’s Blues fails to entertain
the idea of these conditions directly leading to Sonny’s drug abuse as a way of escaping the grim
reality of the ghetto (Kowalska 5). In the narrative, Sonny tells his brother, the Narrator, that the
reason he “wanted to leave Harlem so bad was to get away from drugs” (Baldwin).
James Baldwin grew up in Harlem, where the issue of drug addiction was prevalent
among the African American population at the time. According to, opium smokers grew
substantially during the mid-twentieth century following the United Kingdom’s defeat of China
during the opium conflict that forced China to legalize opium. People, especially the young
population, followed suit in smoking opium, especially in the USA, where it grew rampantly as
smack (Schneider 3). The witnessing of these events influenced James Baldwin in composing

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Sonny’s Blues to depict the grim realities of drug addiction among the marginalized African
American population. Walter argued that Baldwin’s short tale figures a novel idea of being on
drugs by representing addiction as a sight of possibility for black fugitivity (44). Baldwin
illustrates this reality through the Narrator, who laments the upbringing of Sonny and himself by
remembering the life of the ghetto characterized by basements where people took copious
amounts of drugs and alcohol that trapped most African Americans.
In a contemporary social setting, the phrase 'trap' refers to a drug house used to sell illicit
substances (Cusick and Hickman 369). In the short narrative, Baldwin articulates this social
setting through the Narrator, who mentions that "some escaped the trap" (Baldwin). Through this
quote, the author reflects on the African American experience of the desire to escape from the
trap through engaging in drug use to divert from the hopelessness and despair of achieving
individual fulfillment and happiness. The unforgiving description of drug addiction, and the
misbelief of attaining a good state of mind, is emphasized by Sonny's brother. He mentions that
Sonny constantly searched “for something a little better” (Baldwin 10). Sonny's desire to refute
the literal confinement and hopelessness of the ghetto was highly influential. It nearly drove him
to join the military and accept the risks of joining the conflict to escape the grim reality of
Harlem that Baldwin refers to as the trap.
Baldwin's composition of Sonny's Blues is further grounded on the racial violence against
African Americans by the mainstream American White culture at the time. Specifically, the
author depicts the systemic injustices through the Narrator, who describes his father’s murder. In
the story, drunk White men ran over the Narrator's father and kept driving. The authorities did
not bother to indict or even look for the offenders (Baldwin 10). The parallel historical events
inspire this illustration at the time of Sonny's Blues' composition. In particular, between the

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1950s and 1960s, violence was committed predominantly by White local police officers, along
with the national guards (Brazil 570). In addition to this violence, the perceived indifference and
slow response by historical white institutions, including the federal government and Congress, to
address racial inequalities sparked riots across major cities in the USA (Brazil 570). Perhaps of
most influential for Baldwin was the Harlem riots in 1943. During the riots, six large-scale riots
took place in different ghettos across the United States, with the Harlem ghetto being the first
one. The riots were instigated by the African Americans' experiences of entry barriers into the
middle-class social setting, including violence and intimidation from the predominant white
culture in the US.
With the increased African-American killings by the White policing officers, along with
the denial of justice, the Blacks were increasingly becoming furious about losing their loved ones
resulting in the dislike of the Whites and, in the worst circumstances leading to organized civil
disobedience such as the 1943 Harlem riots. The civil disobedience created tension and fear
among families, especially parents who constantly feared for the safety of their children. These
experiences influenced Baldwin to compose Sonny's Blues, in which he depicts the tension and
fear of the Narrator's mother for the safety of Sonny. In the narrative, Sonny's mother asks the
Narrator to take care of Sonny if anything happens to her. However, Sonny’s brother tells his
mother that Sonny would be okay because he is a good person and has a better moral sense
compared to others (Baldwin 12). Nonetheless, the protagonist’s mother is seen insisting that not
“only the bad ones, nor yet the dumb ones that get sucked under” (Baldwin 12). In this context,
James Baldwin acknowledges the risks associated with Harlem ghettos through the protagonist’s
family, specifically the Narrator's mother. The Narrator’s mother knew that the dark side and the
dangers of Harlem for young people were associated with drugs and violence. Precisely, she

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feared that her son Sonny would give in to his surrounding pressures while the Narrator was
away at war. Nonetheless, Sonny would ultimately succumb to the drug temptation, including
heroin which he used as an excuse for running away from the darkness of Harlem. Baldwin had
experienced the drug temptation and addiction that had befallen the late twentieth-century Black
popular culture that justified it for escaping the grim realities of tension and poverty within the
ghettos due to social segregation (Walter 54).
Another significant influence of Baldwin's composition of Sonny's Blues involved his
experiences with and love for black music, specifically jazz and blues. According to Lordi,
James Baldwin championed the work of blues and jazz artists in several interviews and essays
while featuring black musicians in multiple works of fiction (31). Indeed, Sonny's Blues signifies
a fiction that reveals a proliferation of musicians, singers, and actors whom, through repetition,
Baldwin’s intellect is genuinely illustrated. Moreover, Baldwin illustrates that music was one
way of escaping the impoverished realities of ghettos due to social-economic inequalities
experienced by the marginalized black communities. The African Americans, including James
Baldwin, were descendants of enslaved Black people who left the rural communities to search
for new beginnings and an opportunity to establish a novel African American culture in urban
places. While big cities such as Harlem were expected to make their dreams come true, they
realized that it was not the case due to a lack of employment and increased discrimination and
oppression by the mainstream White culture. In escaping this reality, the Blacks engaged in a
black popular culture characterized by the love for jazz and blues.
During the 1950s, the US started to change gradually following the end of the Second
World War. Harlem represented one of the neighborhoods with most African American citizens
resided. While the CRM struggle's politics intensified, music's art evolved significantly. Most

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nightclubs in Harlem gave life to Blues, Jazz, and musicians such as Sonny to express what the
Blacks felt about racial segregation and systemic oppression at the time. In the narrative, the
Narrator inquires about his brother, and Sonny's responses offer Baldwin's reflection on the
musical world of jazz at the time. For instance, Bird represents Sonny's musical hero, whom he
describes as “one of the greatest jazz musicians alive" whom the Narrator had possibly never
heard of (Baldwin 16). Indeed, Bird was one of the musicians who influenced the rise of bepop,
shaped significantly by Harlem's small black jazz clubs (Reed 1). In the narrative, Sonny’s music
signifies Baldwin’s strategy to represent the emotions of the musicians and what they felt then.
For instance, while Sonny and his brother listened to the woman singing, Sonny reflects that
“listening to that woman sing, it struck me all of a sudden how much suffering she must have
had to go through-tosing like that” (Baldwin 26). Through Sonny, Baldwin reflects African
Americans' suffering as an unavoidable part of life reflected through music.
Conclusion
Baldwin's point of view in Sonny's Blues constitutes the central themes of class
supremacy and racial segregation stemming from the racial discrimination he experienced within
the context of the twentieth-century CRM. This paper has comprehensively analyzed the
sociocultural setting that influenced Baldwin's composition of Sonny's Blues short narrative. One
of the significant issues of the narrative composition included the CRM that articulated black
consciousness at the time. The other influential aspect involved the setting, predominantly
Harlem, a region characterized by poverty, drugs, and tension experienced by the author and
other African Americans. James Baldwin was also influenced by class supremacy, which
resulted in social injustice and racial segregation that propelled protests and riots in the ghetto
during his upbringing. Another significant influence of Baldwin's composition of Sonny's Blues

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involved his experiences with and love for black music, specifically jazz and blues. The Blacks
mainly used music to express their feelings about the situation. Through music, Baldwin depicts
African Americans' racial segregation and oppression during the 1950s.

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Works Cited
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DY0M2U4YzkwZDliNQ. Accessed 19 Nov. 2022.
Brazil, Noli. "Large-scale urban riots and residential segregation: A case study of the 1960s US
Riots." Demography 53.2 (2016): 567–595.
Cusick, Linda, and Matthew Hickman. "‘Trapping’in drug use and sex work careers." Drugs:
education, prevention and policy 12.5 2005: 369–379.
Francis, Consuela. The Critical Reception of James Baldwin, 1963-2010:" an Honest Man and a
Good Writer." Vol. 70. Boydell & Brewer, 2014.
Gale, Cengage Learning. A Study Guide to James Baldwin's Sonny's Blues. Gale, Cengage
Learning, 2015.
Jones, Jacqueline C. "Finding a Way to Listen: The Emergence of the Hero as an Artist in James
Baldwin's" Sonny's Blues." CLA Journal 42.4 1999: 462–482.
Kowalska, Eva. "Troubled reading:'Sonny's blues' and empathy." Literator: Journal of Literary
Criticism, Comparative Linguistics and Literary Studies 36.1 2015: 1–6.
Lordi, Emily J. "James Baldwin and The Sound of Soul." CR: The New Centennial Review 16.2
2016: 31–46.
Poetry Foundation. "James Baldwin." Poetry Foundation, 2022,
www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/james-Baldwin. Accessed 18 Nov. 2022.
Reed, Harry A. "Yardbird suite 1: Charlie" Yardbird" Parker (1920-1955) and the convergence
of Kansas City and New York City nightclubs in the birth of Bebop." Western Journal of
Black Studies 22.1 1998: 1.

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Schneider, Eric C. Smack: Heroin and the American city. University of Pennsylvania Press,
2008.
Walter, Patrick F. "Intoxicating Blackness: Addiction and Ambivalent Sounds of Fugitive Life in
James Baldwin's "Sonny's Blues." MELUS 46.3 (2021): 44-64.