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Style
Explanation and Analysis:
Baldwin’s writing style in “Sonny’s Blues” is lyrical and poetic. He uses a wide variety of figurative language to capture the emotional journey of the narrator as he navigates watching his brother Sonny struggling with drug addiction, as well as his young daughter dying. The end of the story is particularly poetic, with the narrator detailing his experience of Sonny’s piano playing (as part of an improvised jazz set) using rich figurative language, as seen in the following passage:
I seemed to hear with what burning he had made [the song] his, with what burning we had yet to make it ours, how we could cease lamenting. Freedom lurked around us and I understood, at last, that he could help us to be free if we would listen, that he would never be free until we did. Yet, there was no battle in his face now. I heard what he had gone through, and would continue to go through until he came to rest in earth.
Here Baldwin uses a variety of poetic maneuvers to engage readers emotionally. He has the narrator describe the “burning” that Sonny has inside of him, how it in turn becomes the listeners’ burning, how it is so powerful that the listeners can “cease lamenting” about the suffering in their lives. Baldwin goes on to describe “freedom lurk[ing] all around” and a kind of “battle” leaving Sonny’s face—descriptions that don’t make sense logically but capture, in a lyrical way, something important about the power of Sonny’s passion in this moment and the way it resonates with the narrator (and the rest of the people at the club). Here, as throughout the story, Baldwin uses new and unusual turns of phrase in order to bring readers more deeply into a scene and help them understand its emotional stakes.
Related Themes:
