Heroin Addiction In Sonny's Blues By James Baldwin

Nathalie Diaz’s poems “How to Go to Dinner with a Brother on Drug” and “ My Brother at 3 A.M” point out how drug and alcohol abuse cause stress and problems over a family. Diaz explains the struggle that her family has to be through because of her brother addiction. Diaz’s poems show her life and the struggle she needs to experience such as drug addiction, violence, and poverty.

According to (jod.sagepub.com) black adolescents and young adults from Harlem sampled heroin by the age of 18. Harlem is an urban neighborhood, filled with public assistance apartments, poverty, and violence caused havoc on the neighborhood. Family struggles normally plagued those who lived in these communities, lack of money meant that most kids turned to the streets to find closure and assistance. Sonny’s Blues was written by James Baldwin who was also faced with the similar troubles, born to a single mother in Harlem, who later remarried. Growing up with other siblings favoritism was happening, according to pbs.org, he didn't get on well with his religious stepfather. The story also states, Sonny being the fathers favorite and was “the apple of his fathers’ eye". Baldwin’s work usually shows similar situations as to where one child is favored over the other since he's lived through

"Sonny's Blues" is the story of a youthful jazz artist named Sonny from Harlem, NY who

Baldwin’s intent on writing this piece focuses on pain and suffering. The author stresses that not everybody is born in the best circumstances. Sonny was one of those people who grew up in a rickety town where people often did not make it out successful. He tried so hard to get out of the poverty, violence, drugs, and gangs, but he became influenced by the wrong people and fell into heroin. Baldwin wanted the show the readers that people cope with pain and suffering in different ways. However, Sonny had a passion for music and wanted to become a jazz musician. This was also his way of coping with

In James Baldwin short story "Sony's Blue" he uses music to represent Sonny's struggle with his addiction to heroin. Throughout the story, music was present whenever Sonny's addiction was mentioned. When Sonny first told his brother that he wanted to play jazz music for a living he mentioned that Charlie Parker was one of his inspirations, this is interesting because Charlie Parker was a drug addict who died from his addiction. This also seemed like it took place around the time that Sonny started abusing drugs with the goal of completely focusing on playing the piano. At the end of the story, Sonny talked to his brother about how he felt while he was taking heroin. He told him that it felt warm and cold in his vein and made him feel in control.

Trying to control suffering by the numbing of senses and emotions with drugs, only leads to the entrapment of oneself in the suffering. Through jazz music, in Baldwin’s “Sonny’s Blues,” we see that drugs are tied to, and amplify the unavoidable suffering that takes control and is woven into their lives. The “it” in “it can come again” is not only the drug addiction, but the ways in which addiction “can” bring “again” the reminders of past and present sufferings, without a solution to a “way not to suffer.” We see this in Sonny, who struggles with challenges of being a minority, the death of his mother, and conflict with his brother and step family, and resorting to his heroin addiction to deal with his pain. He is eventually able to deal

In the short story, “Sonny’s Blues,” James Baldwin utilizes heroin addiction to exemplify the societal stereotypes surrounding drug addiction. Set in Harlem in the 1950’s, an unnamed narrator and his brother, Sonny, experience the consequences of growing up in an impoverished neighborhood, eventually separated by their differing coping mechanisms. The author introduces the characters in their adult lives after one brother entangles himself into the lifestyle that accompanies heroin. By contrasting the narrator’s prosperity with Sonny’s misfortune, Baldwin illustrates his view on the inescapable cycle of drugs and poverty.

James Baldwin’s classic short story “Sonny’s Blues,” features emotional topics like struggles, addiction, and love. The story takes place in Harlem, New York in the early 1950’s, and revolves around the narrator’s perspective on Sonny’s life and the impact the community had around them.

Near the beginning of the story, along with flashbacks of the narrator, the reader learns about the Harlem neighborhood in which the narrator and his brother were raised. The unnamed narrator characterizes the individuals on the street as being populated with individuals suffering from poverty, prostitutes, and drug addicts. The narrator felt guilty for returning his ex-heroin addicted brother “back into the danger he had almost died trying to escape” (76). Elise Miller, a Ph.D. and professor, transcribes in her journal about James Baldwin a parallel that connects the use of drugs in “Sonny’s Blues” as well as in James Baldwin early childhood. Miller suggests in her journal, “[Baldwin’s] concerns about being contingent or derivative give rise to a number of psychological and literary innovations”, due to his use of a negative environment (Miller

In the story “Sonny’s Blues” by James Baldwin, conflict, setting, characterization, point of view, language, and tone are used creatively and intelligently to give the reader an emotional rollercoaster from reunitment, to abandonment along with the feeling of mournfulness. The story begins as a narrator, an algebra teacher at a local high school in Harlem, reads of his brother’s arrest for selling and use of heroin. He is immensely disturbed. The slightest thought of his brother reminds him of his students, who face limited possibilities growing up in the hostile place that is Harlem. At the end of the day the narrator is met at the gate of the school by one of Sonny’s old friends, a fellow addict of his that would always be a part of something

Heroine can leave people in terrible conditions and even cause death. The drug can destroy not only the life of one person, but it can destroy the lives of many. “Not only are you affecting your own life, but the shrapnel that is produced goes to the people you love the most,” (Gail Morris np). It is assumed that people turn to heroin because it is cheaper than prescription pain killers. In the short story “A Mother Lifts Her Son, Slowly, from Heroin’s Abyss”, written by Katharine Seelye, Gail Morris woke up one morning to find her son, Alex, nearly dead on the sofa. Alex had been using heroin the night before and overdosed while his mother was not home. With hopes for a brighter future, Alex and Gail strived for progress everyday and Alex’s condition slowly got better.

Cathedral”, written by Raymond Carver is a short story that emphasized the use of drugs. “Sonny’s Blues”, written by James Baldwin is a short story that devalued the use of drugs. Without the drugs in “Cathedral”, the narrator and Robert would have never been able to communicate, the picture would have never been drawn, and the narrator would have never understood the blind man. However, in “Sonny’s Blues”, Sonny does not need drugs to communicate, to play the piano, and to understand who he is. Carver and Baldwin explore the use of drugs differently in regard to personal communication, artistic expression, and self actualization.

What kind of effect on the human body heroin has? Heroin is extremely addictive, so once someone begins using, it is not easy to give up. Through taking excessively or using for a long time, addicts will be affected both physically and mentally.　If the worst comes to worst, they will die. Once a person becomes addicted to heroin, seeking and using the drug becomes their primary purpose in life. They forget what the true pleasure of living is.

In the “Sonny’s Blues” man versus society is evident whereby the narrator’s brother is arrested due to the heroin addiction. The society finds it unacceptable for people to use heroin but Sonny is addicted to it, in essence, he cannot do without it. He is therefore arrested. Sonny’s brother dislikes sonny’s brother because of their drug addiction this is evidently seen when he encounters them in the school courtyard he feels pity for them.