Mann 1

Cassie Mann
Dr. Doug Smith
English 100:14
November 17 2016
Report Name

From the Going To Meet The Man collection, James Baldwins 1957 short story Sonnys
Blues finishes with the narrators epiphany, or sudden realization which gives a new perspective
on life, by apprehending the importance of music in his brother, Sonnys life. Being African
American, Sonny and his brother were often faced with many struggles including systemic
racism which limited the abilities of those who had the drive to be greater than what the rest of
the world believed they could be. In Ezra Pounds 1915 translation poem The River-Merchants
Wife: A Letter, a young woman is faced with the absence of her husband who has set off for a
five-month long business trip. The poem is a letter that she has written for her husband, longing
for his return as she watches the seasons change from spring, through summer and into autumn.
Setting plays an important role in The River-Merchants Wife: A Letter by showing the effect
the natural environment has on the perspective of the wifes longing for love. In Sonnys Blues
setting displays the contrast of how the narrator and Sonny both face the daily struggles of their
environment.
The story is set in 1950s Harlem, where the unnamed narrator lives with his wife, Isabel,
and two sons. He lives a fairly stable, middle class life, working as a math teacher in a
segregated school in the Harlem district. The narrators brother, Sonny has spent his life trying to

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escape the dark, bleak surroundings which is Harlem. From the start, we learn that Sonny used
heroin as an escape from his reality.
We learn through many flashbacks, that Sonny and his brother don't have a very strong
relationship. This deteriorated when Sonny decided he wanted to become a jazz piano player.
Without his brothers acceptance and encouragement, Sonny felt trapped unless he was
performing or under the influence of heroin, a drug which was very common in the jazz world.
Many jazz musicians have had unsalvageable drug issues including Charlie Parker, one of
Sonnys biggest influences. At the beginning of the story, we find the first person, central
narrator reading the paper in the subway on his way to work. He learns that his brother was
arrested after an apartment raid downtown which involved selling and using heroin. The narrator
decides to not contact Sonny during this time of his life. They hadnt kept in touch for quite some
time, until the death of the narrators daughter, Grace, which lead to Sonny receiving a letter from
his brother while away at rehab. They continued to write back and forth and decided to meet up
once Sonny could return back home.
Still confused by Sonnys life choices, the narrator agrees to go with Sonny to watch him
perform at a nightclub. When they arrive at the club, Sonny is greeted by many people, this
shows his brother how well respected he is as a musician. In this dark and smokey setting, his
brother realizes this is a sort of sanctuary for Sonny. A place where he can forget about his drug
addiction and can go to release some of his withheld pain through his talents as a jazz musician.
The narrator begins to understand this when Sonny starts to solo on the jazz standard, Am I
Blue. He can see the suffering coming out of Sonny during his performance and begins to
appreciate the life of a musician. Creating music has a completely different effect than just
listening to it. Music is given a liberation quality which can separate the artist from their

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suffering and make pleasure out of pain. The narrator can feel the struggles that Sonny is going
through to emote the music the way he does and begins to contemplate his own struggles through
life. Reminiscing the deaths of his daughter Grace, his mother and father, and of his uncle he
barely knew, the narrator is touched by the music which his brother plays and thanks him by
sending a scotch and milk to the bandstand. As its placed onto the piano, it glows, Baldwin
describes:
He didnt seem to notice it, but just before they started playing again, he sipped from it
and looked toward me, and nodded. Then he put it back on top of the piano. For
me, then,

as they began to play again, it glowed and shook above my brothers head like the

very

cup of trembling. (Baldwin 115)

This is in reference to a passage in the bible which is known as Gods expression of forgiveness
and redemption. This could mean that Sonnys relationship with his brother has been repaired
and that everything will be okay with them in the future. This resolution is slightly ambiguous as
we are not completely certain whether Sonny stays away from heroin or if he ends up relapsing.
Throughout the story, it is easy to understand the fear that the narrator has when thinking
about the life his brother has been living through symbolism. Ice is used multiple times to
symbolize the unsettling feeling which the narrator portrays. This can be found in the very
beginning of the story after the narrator discovers Sonny has been arrested in a newspaper
article:
A great block of ice got settled in my belly and kept melting there slowly all day long,
while I taught my classes algebra. It was a special kind of ice. It kept melting,
sending
(Baldwin 93)

trickles of ice water all up and down my veins, but it never got less.

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It can be found once again while the narrator is observing a conversation by his wife, Isabel, and
Sonny during their first meal together once reunited in Harlem:
She chatted as though there were no subject which had to be avoided and she got Sonny
past his first, faint stiffness. And thank God she was there, for I was filled with
that icy

dread again. Everything I did seemed awkward to me, and everything I

said sounded

freighted with hidden meaning. (Baldwin 99)

Another form of symbolism in this story is light, or absence of light in some cases. The darkness
represents the despair felt by many African Americans during this time period. The light
represents the hope of a better future for the members of their family and community. Moonlight
is mentioned while the brothers Mother is describing the death of their uncle, and a spotlight
shines onto Sonny, the piano, and his drink during his performance at the club in Harlem.
The concept of suffering arises many times throughout Baldwins story. Just about every
character has suffered in some way whether it be due to the loss of a family member, addiction,
or many other limitations which African Americans faced in the 1950s. This is a constant weight
on the characters. After witnessing a revival meeting, Sonny recognizes the amount of suffering
that one of the women must have gone through in order to execute the feeling through her voice
when she sang. This led to a large discussion by Sonny and his brother on how to face suffering.
Sonny believes theres a way to avoid suffering, while his brother believes that you need to
accept your surroundings and suffer through all the problems that arise instead of trying to find
an escape.
Where as in the poem The River-Merchants Wife: A Letter, we are taken through the
emotions that a young woman of about sixteen years is feeling after her husband leaves to go on
a business trip. In the letter to her husband, she looks back on their first encounter when they

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were just children playing, their wedding day when she was fourteen, a year later when she has
fallen in love with him, the day he left her for his trip, and how she is feeling in the present
without him. She expresses that she would walk many miles just to be reunited with her love
once again.
The setting begins in Chokan, the home village of the couple in the spring time, theyre
playing as children. We know this from the flowers, plums, and bamboo which is available to
them in their natural environment. This gives a happy, warm feeling to the start of the poem.
Once the husband leaves and travels to Ku-to-yen by river, the only thing which connects the two
lovers is the push and pull of the river, which brings them closer together but also pushes them
further away from each other. It is essentially a barrier between them. As the speaker ages, and
time goes on, the setting of the poem shifts to Autumn. The leaves are falling and the air is
getting colder. Things are beginning to decay and wither, just like the womans heart that is
longing for her husband. During the time of her husbands absence, the woman realizes how
much she loves her husband, and how much she wishes he was back in Chokan with her. Twice
she mentions the gate which represents yet another barrier between the two loves.
Throughout the poem, Pound uses imagery to express the loneliness that the speaker feels
during the time which her husband is away. While the monkeys may not actually be making
sorrowful noises, this non sequitur line gives the impression that due to the separation from her
husband, the speaker is so full of sorrow, that everything from her perspective is dreadful. The
time which has passed is represented through the thickness of the different growing mosses by
the front gate, where she first met her husband and where she wished him goodbye:
You dragged your feet when you went out.
By the gate now, the moss is grown, the different mosses,

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Too deep to clear them away! (Pound 1130)
The overgrown moss can also symbolize the loneliness suffocating the speaker from the void of
her husband. The paired butterflies mentioned bring the speaker pain because they remind her of
how her pair is not present. Theyre also compared to the falling leaves of autumn due to their
colour: The leaves fall early this autumn, in wind./The paired butterflies are already yellow with
August (Pound 1131). Because leaves usually change from green to a variety of yellows and
reds in the autumn, fall from the trees, and wither away, the paired yellow butterflies symbolize
the decaying love in the relationship of the river-merchant and his wife since they are not
currently together.
It is revealed in The River-Merchants Wife: A Letter that distance has a large effect on
a relationship. Throughout this poem, the speaker starts being reluctant of the forced marriage to
having the willingness to travel a very far distance by foot in order to be with her husband once
again after the five month separation. The seasons changing is similar to the change of the
speakers feelings and thoughts throughout her marriage to the river-merchant. This provides a
specific tone to the poem which would not exist if the season stayed the same throughout it all.
Along with the seasons changing throughout the setting, the home village of Chokan is
significant to the poem because it is where the two characters first met, got married, and live
while the husband is not away on business trips. In the short story Sonnys Blues, Harlem,
New York provides the perfect atmosphere for a story about an African-American jazz musician
who struggles with addiction and other disappointments and forms of suffering throughout life.
The final scene in the dark, smokey, nightclub provides an intimate setting for the narrator to
contemplate how he treated his brother throughout his life and recognize that music is a
exceptional outlet for alleviating the stress from every day suffering that many African

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Americans were faced with during the 1950s. In conclusion, setting has a significant impact on
revelations that occur during Sonnys Blues and The River-Merchants Wife: A Letter. If
these stories adapted different settings, readers would not be able to understand the suffering and
struggle which these characters experienced due to the time and place that their stories were
positioned.

Works Cited

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Baldwin, James. "Sonny's Blues." The Norton Introduction to Literature. By Kelly J. Mays.
12th ed. New York: W.W. Norton, 2016. 93-115. Print.
Pound, Ezra. "The River-Merchant's Wife: A Letter." The Norton Introduction to Literature.
By Kelly J. Mays. 12th ed. New York: W.W. Norton, 2016. 1130-131. Print.