I feel that if this is my blog, honesty is best.. James Baldwin's "Sonny's Blues" is not a terrible story, it just did very little to make me interested in the characters. It felt as if he was hoping to convey many messages , yet I didn't care. The individuals in the story begged for meaning in their struggles, yet by the last page the rang hollow. If stories are windows into different versions of an assortment of varying lives, I would have likely passed this one without much of a second glance. Maybe it was a "real" story, but it felt too forced. Baldwin felt as if he "needed" me to know just how painful life is. Music is something I hold very dear, so understanding that painful beauty that resonates out of every strained notes is no stranger to me. Many artists find some form of salvation and often destruction in music's loving embrace, but this is not an original story. Maybe it should be considered the retelling of an "age-old" tell, but if so, it feels empty. Maybe Baldwin isn't my style.
As hollow as I found the story, there were still messages conveyed, and many of those were worth propping up. The story that the mother tells to the narrator about his father and her relationship with him is very painful, and lovely (84-85). It was nice to see those characters embellished on . Baldwin's ability to encompass a vast part of the lives the two individuals have led, is notable. In just a few pages I felt as if I got to know these characters quite intimately, and that is a talent to do in a few pages. I wish I found myself connected to that relationship that we shared, but something is holding me back.
I wasn't going to go for humor this week, but Batman singing "Am I Blue" must be posted.
Works Cited: Booth, Alison, and Kelly J. Mays. The Norton Introduction to Literature. New York: W.W. Norton &, 2011. Print.
It was definitely not my favorite short story in the world, I've read better, like "Young Goodman Brown" and "The Black Cat." Yet I like it a lot better than "Cathedral". You didn't have to pick at the story in order to find out what it was about. I liked how the story began on a suspenseful note since Baldwin dosen't specifiy what is wrong with Sonney until later. He gradually reveals the pains of his characters.
It was definitely not my favorite short story in the world, I've read better, like "Young Goodman Brown" and "The Black Cat." Yet I like it a lot better than "Cathedral". You didn't have to pick at the story in order to find out what it was about. I liked how the story began on a suspenseful note since Baldwin dosen't specifiy what is wrong with Sonney until later. He gradually reveals the pains of his characters.
ReplyDelete