Addiction In Sonny's Blues By James Baldwin

Addiction can be the effect of many factors from one’s life. While addiction is a major problem, the influences that lead to this aspect of life are also very significant as to why a person copes this way. In some cases, the initial problem that impacts these decisions is the surrounding environment. Specifically, the text, “Sonny’s Blues” written by James Baldwin, reflects how two African Americans, Sonny and his brother, experience racism hardships during the 1950s. The narrator watches Sonny go through addiction while he also tries to become a musician playing the piano with an obsessive passion. The story of both African American characters strongly illustrates how poverty and limited opportunities due to racism pushes for escapes such

For those who live in poverty, it is challenging to leave it and let alone, be successful. Growing up in poverty creates a negative atmosphere for maturing children, but as well as adults. Towards the beginning of the novel, Sonny and the narrator ride towards Harlem, where they conclude, “…boys exactly like the boys we once had been found themselves smothering in these houses, came down into the streets for light and air and found themselves encircled by disaster” (112). This thought emphasizes that nothing has changed in the streets of their childhood now that they are adults. Years later, still living in Harlem, they have not really escaped the darkness of their childhood and nor will the children. As the narrator mentions, “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” (104). This ceiling of opportunities does not go high for them. The way the narrator words it, expresses that there is not much to really look forward to. The narrator has a stable job as a algebra teacher, but Sonny on the other hand seems like he already reached the ceiling for his possibilities. They are constrained to where they live and will continue to suffer with those conditions. Sonny and the narrator realize that those boys will end up like them and that nothing will change for

Due to his conditions living in poverty and having limited opportunities to evolve, he uses heroin. A major factor of how Sonny’s living conditions look like are caused by racism in his environment. When Sonny came home, both Sonny and the narrator spoke about his feelings about his piano music and addiction to heroin. During this deep conversation, Sonny says, “It’s not so much to play. It’s to stand it, to be able to make it at all. On any level. […] In order to keep from shaking to pieces” (131). His reason for using heroin is to forget about what’s happening around him. The heroin he uses makes him feel as if he can survive this world and use it as a distraction. His life around him is constantly having him feel defeated and trapped. For Sonny, it seems that it is almost impossible to evolve in his environment because of racism. Many people living in Harlem grew up in poverty, with racism, and around drugs which made it extremely difficult to become someone or to do anything