Elegance of Art

    People are often born into different kinds of situations with different kinds of opportunities. Some people struggle to make ends meet, whereas others are born with money. In the 1950s, many African-Americans in Harlem dealt with discrimination and social injustices. Due to these roadblocks, the only way African Americans could escape was through drugs or music. Sonny, the narrator’s brother, didn’t have a proper education and felt taking drugs was the only route he could take. Through Freud’s concepts of artistic gift, repression, and sublimation, James Baldwin’s short story “Sonny’s Blues” expresses how art, which in this case is Sonny playing on the piano, is used to escape Harlem’s discrimination against colored people.

     Harlem in the 1950s was a time where colored people were being oppressed and had limited opportunities. Sonny was a victim of this oppressed society and according to the narrator, Sonny’s brother, Harlem, was “filled with rage” (Baldwin 1). When the narrator saw Sonny getting locked up for using heroin, the narrator was in a state of shock. This made the narrator suppress his feelings, he stated, “I couldn’t believe it: but what I mean by that is that I couldn’t find any room for it anywhere inside me. I had kept it outside me for a long time…I told myself that Sonny was wild, but he wasn’t crazy”(Baldwin 1). Sonny was dealt with two choices, which were either the drug life or the education route. He chooses to take drugs because that’s what he believes will make him survive another 24 hours. As soon as the narrator hears about the news of Sonny getting caught with heroin, he starts to suppress it by questioning if it’s true and making up excuses to cope with who Sonny has become. By doing this, the narrator pushes those thoughts out of his conscious mind (Freud 2215). Hence, this makes his memories repressed, and now those memories live in his unconsciousness (Freud 2215). Elaine R. Ognibene from St. John’s School in Rochester states, “It is not Sonny but he fears for if he is faced with a condition of dissonance: his carefully ordered middle-class existence cannot acknowledge a drug addict brother, yet somehow he feels vaguely responsible” (Ognibene 36). The purpose of the narrator repressing the thoughts of Sonny in jail is because the narrator is a respectable algebra teacher, yet his brother still fits the stereotypes that were set for black children in Harlem. Which we’re getting called crackheads, hoodlums, and many other racial slurs. This hurts the narrator, and he fears that he will be associated with Sonny’s mistake after all the hard work he put in. Thus, he has repressed those thoughts because he did not want to be put in the same group as Sonny.

     Moreover, Baldwin indicated the importance of jazz, and how it drove Sonny away from Harlem. Sonny mentioned how he felt trapped in Harlem because it was a filthy neighborhood. He stated, “But the reason I wanted to leave Harlem so bad was to get away from drugs. And then, when I ran away, that’s what I was running from. When I came back, nothing had changed, I hadn’t changed, I was just – older” (Baldwin 18). Sonny did not want to return to his old lifestyle of taking drugs and being a lowlife, so he went on to follow his passion, which was to play jazz on the piano. According to Freud, this is Sonny using his artistic gift, his talent to play the piano, to redirect his drug addiction (2235). In other words, the artistic gift is a talent you are born with, you cannot learn it over time. In this case, playing the piano is Sonny’s artistic gift (Freud 2235). When Sonny and his brother were having a conversation about Sonny’s career, Sonny got mad, the narrator says, “I was beginning to realize that I’d never seen him so upset before.” (Baldwin 10). Sonny got frustrated because his brother was not taking anything Sonny said seriously. The narrator believed Sonny was impacted by Harlem’s negative influence on colored people and that Sonny would never change his lifestyle. The art of jazz music works as an outlet for Sonny to let his feelings and emotions out. He had felt that he could not get himself to share with his brother.

     Moreover, Freud considers sublimation a salutary and sophisticated way of dealing with urges that may be disturbing, rather than doing something that can be harmful to society. (2215). Sublimation allows people to channel that energy into things that are beneficial (Freud 2215). Sonny sublimated his urge to take drugs by playing jazz on the piano, which was socially justified in Harlem. The conflict was that the narrator was never acquainted with Sonny’s addiction, and as a consequence, he failed to understand him and his passion for music. Eva Kowalska from the University of Johannesburg states, ” Sonny’s music is acceptable as the counterpart to his addiction, a glimmer of life within the desperation of his situation” ( Kowalska n.p.g). Sonny’s passion for music is substituting for his drug addiction. The power of art in the early 1950s helped colored people find an outlet to channel their energy into. 

    When one reads the short story “Sonny’s Blues” by James Baldwin, one can comprehend the hardship colored people faced in Harlem during the 1950s. Other options, such as art, were considered where they felt they had freedom. Art has transformed Sonny from a drug addict to a jazz musician. Playing the piano was an outlet for Sonny to redirect his feelings and emotions. Harlem was not the right place for Sonny; it discriminated against colored people and didn’t have many opportunities for people to succeed. Harlem made the narrator feel that he had failed as a role model because he couldn’t save his brother from being a drug addict. It made the narrator repress his thoughts because he didn’t want to be associated with his brother, Sonny. The art of playing the piano was a gift Sonny was born with, and it has helped him steer his life in the right direction.