After reading "Sonny's Blues," I thought back to the first story of the book, "The Rockpile" and the lifestyle that Johnnie and Roy lived in comparison to that of Sonny and the narrator in "Sonny's Blues." Their thoughts and ideas on their lives seem to be polar opposites and I believe this to be a result of the environments of their upbringings.
The environment that the boys in, "The Rockpile" are brought up in is a very strict God-fearing household in a neighborhood full of "saints and sinners" Their whole life is characterized through the filter of the church, especially since they fear their father who is a deacon. This fear, although potent, offers clear guidance throughout their life and keeps them from straying off of the path set out for them by their parents. Their "shelteredness" goes so far as to make it a cardinal offense that Roy goes downstairs and plays on the rockpile with the other "sinner" kids. This fear is more apparent with John ("John said nothing: he was afraid of the rockpile and the boys who played there" (15)), but even Roy is afraid of his father as he is unable to tell Gabriel (his father) what had happened to him.
In stark contrast the environment that the boys in Sonny grow up in is one of suffering and hardship. As they grow up in an area of poverty, living in run down housing projects, they are offered a limited number of ways out of this lifestyle. While the narrator chooses the military, hoping to be able to make a better life for himself and his family once he gets out, Sonny seems to take an easier route by getting involved with the drug scene. Even though the narrator seems to have "made it out," and has created a decent living for his family by being a teacher, he is still living in the same area, in a similar run down housing project. Even the kids he is teaching remind him of younger versions of himself and Sonny, and after Sonny is caught he wonders if they are finding similar outlets for their pain and adversity ("Yet it happened and here I was, talking algebra to a lot of boys who might, every one of them, for all I knew, be popping off needles every time they went to the head" (104).)
Despite the seemingly similar economic standings (perhaps the Grimes family is a little better off, but not by much) between the two families in "the Rockpile" and "Sonny's Blues," it is really their environments that sets them apart and creates two completely different narratives for two sets of similarly aged boys. This dynamic really makes me wonder how the Grimes boys would have turned out if their father hadn't been a deacon and they hadn't had such a strong influence of the Church in their lives. And conversely, it makes me wonder how the brothers in "Sonny's Blues" might have turned out if they might have had some strong influence in their adolescent lives (such as the Church).
You make an interesting point here. It is natural to draw connections between the two stories. As you said, both apparently come from similar economic standings. I like the idea that you bring up at the end of the blog post. I believe that if the boys in "Sonny's Blues" had a strong influence in their lives it is possible that their entire lives would be different. For example plausible to me that if they had the Church as a strong influence on their lives, in a similar fashion to the boys in "The Rockpile" Sonny might not have such a drug problem because he sees it as a sin. It's hard to know for sure though. This is defiantly something that is interesting to think about.
ReplyDeleteOne parallel I see is the hatred John and Sonny both have for their environments. John absolutely hates his stepfather who essentially runs his life and Sonny very clearly detests Harlem which he can't seem to escape from. If they swapped environments, John could get the freedom he desperately wants while Sonny could get some much needed guidance.
ReplyDeleteThe issue of context is important when discussing any character's development. Although both cases can be taken as extremes, the fact that the kids are so attracted to the Rockpile may suggest something about how the kids would react to other enticing stimuli with the "guidance" of their father and the church. I think that even with the church in the lives of Sonny and his brother, their situation may have turned out the same. The issue was more of the lack of any options in the scenario rather than some other force, like th church, to guide them.
ReplyDeleteIt is interesting that you say that Sonny chose the easy life, because if anything I would say he chose the hard one. The narrator has a simple 9-5 style job where he knows he will get paid for just showing up. While Sonny on the other hand, has to keep improving and getting better if he is going to ever make money playing jazz. This is seen when he spends his days playing the piano, just to get started. He also has to deal with the continual struggle of controlling his drug habits.
ReplyDeleteWhile the neighborhood Sonny and his brother grew up in certainly is plagued by drug abuse (as the narrator seeing Sonny in the boys he teaches reflects), it's interesting that in this case Sonny is the one who has fled the neighborhood, "made it out," while the narrator is the one who "stayed" (and he's the one living the more conventional, uncontroversial life). In this story, it's the mixed-race bohemian neighborhood of Greenwich Village that "corrupts" Sonny, an environment that the narrator finds very unnerving and alien the first time he pursues Sonny downtown. Sonny's environment had something to do with his drug abuse, surely--as the "friend" the narrator sees outside the school is the one who introduced him to heroin--but the social/cultural context that enables his habit is, notably, outside Harlem.
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