Hilton1
Tyler Hilton
7/29/14
Analysis
Lisa Couch
Rough Draft
Fighting the Darkness
In the story Sonny Blues by James Baldwin, two brothers try to fight off the darkness of
their lives. The two brothers try to overcome the space between them and get over the depression
they are in. Although darkness follows people throughout their lives, you can always find a way
back to the light, therefore the light will conqueror the dark in the end. Dark vs. light is like evil
vs good, even if it is just two sides of a single person. This means that even if you are in a bad
place and problems keep arising, you can overcome it and find the light like the two main
characters are trying to do through the story.
James Baldwin writes about darkness vs. light in his article Sonny Blues. He uses
darkness as an evil force that overcomes people throughout their life. This darkness could be
anything such as stress, depression, drugs, alcohol, and even relapse. He uses darkness to
represent falling back into rhythm with old habits. It’s almost as if he uses the word darkness
instead of the words I described. The light is the good side of people and the better side to fall
into. The light brings out the best in people and it stands for recovery or becoming a better
person than you were. The characters were in the dark but they overcame it to come to the light,
and this might just mean that there are two different sides of single person but they have to beat
Hilton2
the worst side out. The better side is trying to mature and recover both characters from what they
went through during their childhoods and past. You may be in the darkness for a long time like
Sonny but you can always come back from it and see the light again like how Sonny started to do
near the end.
The narrator shifts or changes as a person throughout the story. The narrator changes in a
good way and comes into the light after seeing so much darkness throughout the story. He sees
so much dark in life and going through such a rough child hood growing up in a poor family. The
narrator sees what his brother is going through and he just wants to be there for him. He was
extremely depressed and felt hidden from the world from the beginning of the story. He felt as if
he had no freedom and he would never escape from that cycle of his family. James Baldwin
shows change in the narrator’s voice by stating, “Freedom lurked around us and I understood, at
