“Sonny’s Blues” By James Baldwin Using Freudian Concepts 

Growing up and living in the late 60s as an African American was one of the most challenging experiences one can possibly face. In the story “Sonny’s Blues” by James Baldwin, he demonstrates some of the obstacles that were being faced in the minority group such as; poverty, racism, drug addiction and lastly depression. The short story, “Sonny’s Blues” can also be further analyzed by looking through the Freudian concepts. Some of the concepts by Freud that were discussed in this story was Sonny’s ability to play music as his way of escaping reality by using his artistic gift. Other examples of the Freudian concepts that are going to be further analyzed are the processes of sublimation, id, ego, superego and lastly repression. 

The short story “Sonny’s Blues” starts out by introducing us with the brother as  narrator reading the newspaper of Sonny being arrested for selling and distributing heroin. Sonny’s brother didn’t sound too surprised when reading about  his little brother being locked up for selling as though it was inevitable for a young black man not choosing a different route in life. Sonny’s brother continues to say “Yet it had happened and here I was, talking about 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”(Baldwin 1). Sonny’s brother knows that his little brother is not the only young black kid going down the wrong path in his life. Additionally, Sonny’s brother continues to say “These boys, now, were living as we’d been living then, they were growing up with a rush and their heads bumped abruptly against the low ceiling of their actual possibilities. They were filled with rage”(Baldwin 1). Even Sonny’s brother knows that being an algebra teacher has restrictions and he can’t do anything more than what he is doing to help these kids not go down the wrong path. 

Sonny also uses drugs as his escape from his reality. According to Freud, we can infer that Sonny using drugs is an example of him trying to repress his actual feelings. Repression according to Frued  occurs when a memory in your mind is too painful for an individual, so the person unconsciously pushes the information out of consciousness and becomes unaware of its existence. This happens when you are under the influence of drugs and don’t want to deal with reality. Some of the things that were happening in Sonny’s life such as his grandfather dying, him not having his parents and the racism around and most importantly the lack of interest society has on black kids succeeding in life. According to an article “ How Does A Parent’s Absence Affect Teens?”  written by Dosser Handron, Ph.D, he states that “Teens whose fathers are absent are more likely to end up in jail for various crimes than youth with both parents present. The probability of ending up in jail is even higher for those teens who have never lived with their fathers in the same house”. For Sonny this means that if he did grow up with his parents then maybe his life outcome wouldn’t end up like this.

Furthermore, racism is another topic Baldwin made sure to include in the story. From the beginning of the story there were indirect signs of slavery in Harlem during that time. When Sonny’s brother found out that his brother was in jail and went back to teaching as if it is normal for kids because he knew something like this was bound to happen to his students. According to the Pew Research Center, the statistics for the past years have shown that black men are incarcerated and are put into juvie more than white people. “Black men were more than six times as likely as white men to be incarcerated in federal and state prisons, and local jails in 2010” (Bruce Drake 1). Even though the statistics that were shown are very recent, they managed to show the statistics on how many people that were incarcerated in the 60s. To tie everything that was just stated Sonny’s brother knew that most of his students were going to end up in the system due to the racism and lack of interest that the government put into the education system in a predominantly black school. 

Another example of racism that was shown in the story was when their uncle died in a  car accident. It showed how carelessly black people were killed. His mother states “This car was full of white men. They was all drunk, and when they seen your father’s brother they let out a great whoop and holler and they aimed the car straight at him” (Baldwin 8). This showed how entitled white people were. Another example of racism that occurred in this story happened to Sonny’s dad. He is tormented by the memory of his brother’s death and because of this he has formed a hatred for white people. 

Another way that the Freudian concepts can be used to analyze “Sonny’s Blues” is Sonny’s artistic gift of being able to play Jazz. After Sonny’s drug addiction he found his true passion which is through music. Sonny had found a way to escape all the troubles he was going through rather than doing drugs. Sonny’s relationship with his brother and his family had improved.“ Then they all came together again, and Sonny was part of the family again. I could tell this from his face”(Balwin 20).

 To conclude, In the story “Sonny’s Blues” by James Baldwin, he talks about some of the things that minority groups were facing in the 60s and sadly still are facing in the 21st century. Some examples of this are racism, drug addiction and poverty. Freud concepts were also analyzed to further explain why Sonny is the way he is and the relationship with this brother.