By Joseph Flibbert (excerpt from Reference Guide to Short Fiction, Detroit and London: St. James Press, 1999.)
With a Hawthornean eye, Baldwin uses images of darkness throughout "Sonny's Blues" to suggest a certain feeling experienced by his characters. Young children are "filled with darkness" as they listen to their parents talk on Sunday afternoons of "the darkness outside." Teenagers, aware of "the low ceiling of their actual possibilities," begin to discover "the darkness of their lives" even as they seek escape from it in the darkness of movie theaters. The darkness of the road Sonny's uncle was killed on (struck by a car filled with white men) stays with Sonny's father for the rest of his life. The streets on which Sonny grew up seem to darken as he passes through them; they convey their mood to him. . . But Sonny and his brother need to learn that "there's no way not to suffer." The difference between them is that Sonny's brother decides submissively to "take it," and Sonny decides to "do something to give it meaning." That's when Sonny begins to play the piano, initially with enthusiasm, eventually with consuming passion. He takes no lessons. He plays from the soul. The improvisational rhythms he creates reflect the darkness in him. Through the power and beauty of Sonny's music, Baldwin reveals the intimate relationship between the blues as a state of mind and as a musical tradition in African American culture. Sonny has found a way not to escape the blues but to give it meaning. Moreover, as an artist he has found a way to transcend tragedy; he not only uses the blues as an outlet for feeling and as an expression of his states of mind, but he also shares and communicates those feelings and in the process makes his music into an affirmation of life.