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Definition of Setting
Setting is where and when a story or scene takes place. The where can be a real place like the city of New York, or it can be an imagined... read full definition
Setting is where and when a story or scene takes place. The where can be a real place like the city of New York, or... read full definition
Setting is where and when a story or scene takes place. The where can be a real place like the... read full definition
Setting
Explanation and Analysis:
“Sonny’s Blues” is set in Harlem—a neighborhood in New York City—in the 1950s. Harlem became majority Black over the first half of the 20th century due to the Great Migration, a mass relocation of Black Americans from the South (which was forcibly segregated by Jim Crow laws) to the North (where racial segregation still existed but in a less extreme form). Here the unnamed narrator reflects on his experience of Harlem from childhood through (early) adulthood:
These streets hadn’t changed, though housing projects jutted up out of them now like rocks in the middle of a boiling sea. […] [H]ouses exactly like the houses of our past yet dominated the landscape, 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. Some escaped the trap, most didn’t.
The narrator paints a bleak portrait of Harlem here, describing how very little has changed in the neighborhood over the years, apart from housing projects jutting out from the streets “like rocks in the middle of a boiling sea.” He describes Harlem as being like a “trap” that “encircles” young people in “disaster.” The narrator’s extreme language here communicates to readers that, while it may have been better than the Jim Crow South, Harlem was not a nourishing place for the Black people who ended up there, as they still faced poverty and limited access to resources.
Another important aspect of the setting of “Sonny’s Blues” is the fact that it is set a couple decades after the Harlem Renaissance, an arts movement led by Black Americans that celebrated Black culture and art. Sonny’s interest in jazz is likely a nod to this aspect of Harlem culture and history.
Related Themes:
