Teddy's (Invisabloid's) ESSAY

Purnell 1

Teddy Purnell

Mr. Salsich

Room 2

20 September 2008

An Essay About James Baldwin's “Sonny's Blues”: A Message in Music by Suzy Bernstein Goldman

Throughout her essay, Goldman makes many phenomenal points and uses many superb words. For example, ”immediately the narrator encounters another surrogate brother in Sonny's old friend...”. Goldman stresses the fact that in his music, is Sonny's life. This is what Goldman writes about for the greater portion of her essay.

In her essay, Goldman writes about “the musicality of “Sonny's Blues”. Goldman writes about the thoughts that other characters have about Sonny's music. “Sonny's fingers filled the air with life, his life”. This is when the narrator realizes that Sonny “needs” to be a musician. Goldman also writes about how James Baldwin writes. “Musical terms along with words like “hear” and “listen” give the title a double meaning.” In other words, Baldwin used things related to music to help you “hear” Sonny's Blues. That is what the majority of the essay is about.

I think that Goldman just wanted to summarize all the most important parts of Sonny's Blues. Although most of the important parts were covered, I think that Goldman should have included the part where Baldwin talked about Sonny's family, because that explains more about why he was peddling heroine-to feed his family. If he was peddling heroine just to make a few bucks, that would be more serious, and it would seem like Sonny was an all out bad person. “You goddam fool, what do want to go and join the army for?””I just told you, to get out of Harlem.” The fact that Sonny wanted to join the army or navy is also important, because it shows that he really hates being in Harlem, and will do anything to get out. I don't agree with him about joining the army just to get out of Harlem, but this is an important part of the story nonetheless. If Goldman had included these parts of the story along with about one or two others, and maybe taken out a few things, the essay would have all the essential sections of the story.

Overall, it was a very redemptive essay. This is one of the best essays I've read. Goldman's usage of words and the depth of her writing made this essay great. It isn't perfect, but then, nothing ever is.