Sonny's Blues

Social Customs in "Sonny's Blues"

James Baldwin's "Sonny's Blues" indicates how different social customs can be for different races, and Baldwin illustrates this by creating two vastly different brothers who exist in two different worlds. The narrator, Sonny's brother, has assimilated into white society as much as possible so he can better himself and become successful. He is a high school teacher, while is brother Sonny is a musician and heroin addict. He does not understand Sonny's life any more than Sonny understands his brother's life. Sonny cannot assimilate into the white culture, and turns to jazz music as a way to escape and survive. His brother never approves of him, which shows just how far apart they are and how social customs are so very different in the two different worlds they travel.

The two brothers also share the common social custom of hoping to escape their past. They lived in poverty like so many black families, and they want to leave the old neighborhood behind and make better lives. The narrator does this by basically becoming "white." He is educated, is a teacher, and does not socialize with the people he grew up with, including his brother. He lives a middle-class life and mildly disapproves of everything else. He seems white in his attitudes and his ideas. Sonny, on the other hand, has retained his black culture and awareness even as he escapes the poverty of their early life. He is truly happy when he plays his music, and that finally brings the two brothers closer together. The novel shows that even people of the same race can have two vastly different social cultures, and that how Americans view each other is based on culture, but also on assimilation. They approve more of the narrator because he has become "white" and made his life into the typical middle-class existence, while they disapprove of Sonny who seems dangerous because he has not assimilated. IT shows how different cultures still exist in the country, even though the nation is based on freedom and "equality" for everyone.