Meaning of Windows in "Sonny's Blues"

There is a worn-out old saying about how when a door closes, there will always be a window to crawl by means of as an alternative. But what if the window has bars on it? Or what if it is also high for an individual to reach with out any individual to give them a increase, and no one seems to be about? Or what if there are other individuals around, but they’re all scrambling to get outside and not absolutely everyone can fairly squeeze through the opening? This analogy is reminiscent of what blacks have been going by means of in 1957 – the year in which James Baldwin wrote “Sonny’s Blues.” Windows appear as a motif all through the quick story, appearing in practically every scene. Windows, even whilst shedding light on reality, provide a view into the unattainable each of these functions drain the hope from the disadvantaged people of Harlem. There is one particular exception even though, in the character of Sonny himself, who creates his personal hope – his personal light – even amongst darkness. The windows in “Sonny’s Blues” let in light, which aids to illuminate a number of realities for the characters in the story. Interestingly adequate, this illumination begins with darkness. At 1 point the narrator recalls the Sunday evenings of his childhood, where guests from church would collect in the living space with his parents. The “darkness developing against the windowpanes” (Mays 82) is a reminder to the children, which includes the young narrator, that their planet is a single of imminent darkness. The blackness of the evening envelopes them just as the blackness of their skin and the murkiness of their neighborhood does it continuously threatens them, knocking at the window like a tree branch on a stormy night. By the time the narrator grows up, even so, he is very utilised to the darkness of his life and the tenebrous windows take on a new which means: denial.

The story opens in a subway, where windows are rendered useless in the tunnels, as the narrator reads the newspaper and learns of his brother’s arrest for heroin. Denial is in fact a comforting possibility in the shadowy underground, and it requires the narrator quite a while to believe the news. The narrator had been avoiding the truth for a whilst just before the story starts, pushing it out into the darkness exactly where he didn’t have to look at it. He’d “kept it outside… for a long time.” (Mays 74) For people privileged adequate to live outside of Harlem, looking through a window may well be a pleasant knowledge. But for residents of Harlem, it is only a reminder of the violent, dingy neighborhoods they have been born into. The folks in the story escape their underprivileged realities by ignoring the windows, instead turning to entertainment as a distraction. As Baldwin says, “the darkness of the movies… blinded them to that other darkness” (Mays 75). In the housing project the narrator lives in, there are enormous windows in the houses. But no 1 “bothers” with them, alternatively opting to “watch the Tv screen” (Mays 80). Television and the motion pictures show anything different from reality, a welcome break from the gloomy view outdoors. The illuminating energy of windows in “Sonny’s Blues” is shown no greater than in the scene in which the narrator remembers talking to his mother for the final time. In the scene, he finds out several shocking things – his father had a brother who was killed, his father cried typically to his mother behind closed doors, and so forth. He learns all this from his mother, who is sitting in the window, the light shining on her black dress, a spotlight for darkness the narrator did not even know existed. “This was the initial time,” he mentioned, “I ever saw my mother appear old” (Mays 83). At the very same time as the narrator is enlightened about his father, his mother stares off into the streets, dreamily, humming a church song, as though seeking for anything more. The mother is not the only 1 to look by way of the windows to find something unattainable. When Sonny returns to New York, he and the narrator take a cab to their neighborhood. Sonny requests that they drive by way of the park so he can see the city he hadn’t noticed for very some time. As they each stare by way of the windows, the narrator realizes that in order for any person to “escape the trap” of Harlem as he did – he had gotten himself a respectable job as an algebra teacher – they need to drop some thing of themselves. No one gets out complete and total. He realizes he and Sonny are searching out the windows for “the part of [them]selves which had been left behind” (Mays 80). One more poignant scene in which the narrator is searching for one thing impossible to grasp through a window is when the narrator observes a revival meeting. They commence singing “‘Tis the old ship of Zion… it has rescued many a thousand” (Mays 92). But, as the narrator points out, not a single of the men and women listening to the hymn had been rescued. It has an effect on people nonetheless. Sonny compares the woman’s singing voice to a drug (Mays 93). The views from specific windows could be like a drug at times.

Another time in the story a window is compared to a lodestone (Mays 96), which is a magnetic rock. Even although the men and women in the story know items are likely not possible, they can't stay away from those thoughts. At this point, it ought to be noted that windows are not the only interior feature that represents the unattainable in this story. On the really 1st page, Baldwin sets up the concept of rooms as barriers. The possibilities of young boys in Harlem are deterred by the “low ceiling of their actual possibilities” (Mays 74). So, while they are trapped in cramped, low-ceilinged rooms, all they have is a window to appear out of to see just what it is they are missing out on. The interesting factor is that windows are described nearly everywhere in the story except in the scenes exactly where Sonny is playing the piano. Sonny’s name is no accident. It is a homophone for “sunny.” There is one thing sunny about his character it appears that with his passion for the piano, he is the only a single performing what he wants to do with his life (even though his brother is the a single with an admirable profession). Sonny has developed his personal sun with music, and when he is playing the piano he does not want any light from the outdoors world.

1 could argue that Sonny is as desperate to crawl by means of those metaphorical windows as any person else in the story. After all, he writes in his letter that he “feels like a man who’s been attempting to climb of some deep, real deep and funky hole and just saw the sun up there, outdoors. I got to get outside” (Mays 78). But it is crucial to bear in mind that this is when he has been arrested and can’t be a part of the jazz scene once more until he returns from rehabilitation. He only longs for an open window when he doesn’t have access to his piano. Right after all, the only time a window is opened in the story, it is opened by Sonny, and he slams it immediately closed again it let in the stench of garbage cans (Mays 88). Even though he may well have had an opportunity to open a metaphorical window to a far better life – he was intelligent, following all – Sonny is content material with obtaining happiness in a darker planet of drugs and nightclubs and jazz. In contrast to his brother, Sonny is aphotic, increasing in spite of darkness rather than attempting to slip by means of a crack into the light. The narrator experiences this beauty in darkness Sonny has located for a brief moment when he listens to Sonny play in the nightclub. He thinks for a moment he may well be in a position to “cease lamenting,” but then remembers that “the globe waits outside” (Mays 100). Sonny’s passion is a rare 1, and most do not adore one thing so considerably that their passion can single-handedly bring them joy that is otherwise hindered by their location in society. The modern world may possibly look really distinct from the one in 1957, but not almost everything has changed. Even right now, the underprivileged individuals of this planet might attempt only briefly to claw their way through a window that may possibly or may not exist for them, struggling for light before settling for darkness.

Supply: Mays, Kelly J. The Norton Introduction to Literature. W. W. Norton and Business, Inc, 2006. Print.