Kianna Carrington

December 14th, 2020

Final Paper, English 2001

Professor Scanlan

Support Is All We Need

In this essay, I will talk about the decisions that are made in the short story “Sonny’s Blues” by James Baldwin using normative ethics. The five normative ethics that are known are Deontology Ethics, Virtue Ethics, Utilitarian Ethics, Feminist Ethics, and Global Ethics. The two ethics that are used throughout this story are utilitarian and virtue. Virtue means the kind of person you want to be. Any choices a person makes will be for them and no one else. Utilitarianism is the “view that the morally right action is the action that produces the most good”. The main characters in “Sonny’s Blues” are Sonny and his nameless older brother. Sonny has just been released from prison, due to drug addiction, and is now living with his brother, his brother’s wife, and their children in Harlem. Sonny’s brother is an algebra teacher. Sonny sees poverty and drug use in Harlem and tells himself that he doesn’t want that to be his life, he wants to pursue music, preferably jazz. His brother isn’t too fond of the idea. He thinks it’s not a career. He’s wasting his time. We see down the road who follows the ethics of virtue and utilitarianism. With important scenes in the story, I will unpack the relationship between the two brothers and why Sonny’s brother doesn’t want him to pursue a career in music. In the end, I’ll conclude that doing what is best for you is better than doing nothing at all.    

As the story continues, we see how the two brothers were brought up. One went in another direction and the other is finding his direction, with music. We also see what happened to their uncle and how it made Sonny’s brother feel, as an older sibling. At times, Sonny’s brother didn’t know what to write to Sonny while he was in prison. He felt that he was failing him as his brother, he should’ve protected him. If he was protecting him as much as he should, maybe Sonny wouldn’t have ended up in prison or did drugs, or both. Just before Sonny’s brother was leaving for the army, his mother told him about their father and their uncle, how close they were, the tons of fun they had, and all the trouble they used to get into. Their mom was sitting by a window, looking out to the streets and she told Sonny’s brother what happened to their uncle, “Then he heard a car motor and that same minute his brother stepped from behind the tree, into the road, in the moonlight. And he started to cross the road. And your father started to run down the hill, he says he don’t know why. 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 […] Your father says he heard his brother scream when the car rolled over him, and he heard the wood of that guitar […] And, time your father got down the hill, his brother weren’t nothing but blood and pulp” (Baldwin, 29). The mother decided to tell Sonny’s brother what happened to their uncle because “you got a brother. And the world ain’t changed.” (Baldwin, 29) meaning that he has to protect his brother at all costs.

After his mom told him what happened to their uncle, Sonny’s brother was married to his wife, Isabel, and was shipped off to the army two days later. Their mother had passed and Sonny’s brother came back from the army “on a special furlough for her funeral” (Baldwin, 30). The funeral was over and it was just Sonny and his brother in the kitchen, where his brother asked him what does he want to do with his life. Sonny finally decided to say he wants to pursue music. His brother wasn’t sure what he meant. In the time his brother was off in the army, Sonny graduated and bought himself a drumset, Sonny’s brother thought he wanted to be a drummer, that’s something in music, but Sonny says no. He told his brother he can play the piano, his brother just frowned at it asking him questions, trying to make it make sense at the same time Sonny was laughing at his brother, “well you think it’s funny now baby, but it not good to be so funny when you have to make your living at it, let me tell you that” (Baldwin, 31). With Sonny laughing at his brother, he got angry and Sonny said back “I don’t want to be a classical pianist. That isn’t what interests me. I mean, I’ll have a lot of studying to do, and I’ll have to study everything, but I mean, I want to play with— jazz musicians […] I want to play jazz” (Baldwin, 31). At this point, Sonny’s brother was frowning even more, and didn’t understand why he wanted to pursue that kind of career, he thought it was “beneath him, somehow” (Baldwin, 31). He didn’t like the idea of his brother spending all his time in nightclubs, all the drunks that hangout at those nightclubs, I believe he was thinking back to what his mother told him about his uncle and how he died. A lot comes with that kind of career and Sonny’s brother was fearful of that. But at the same time, he could’ve been supportive towards it, instead of questioning and frowning upon it.

Along the road of Sonny wanting to pursue jazz music, his brother decided to go with him to a jazz club to see where he’ll be spending the majority of his time and to convince himself that what Sonny is making the right choice for his life “Then they all gathered around Sonny and Sonny played. Every now and again one of them seemed to say, amen. Sonny’s fingers filled the air with life, his life. But that life contained so many others. And Sonny went all the way back, he really began with the spare, flat statement of the opening phrase of the song. Then he began to make it his. It was very beautiful because it wasn’t hurried and it was no longer a lament”(Baldwin, 47). This quote is Sonny’s brother realizing how good of a musician Sonny is and can be and he also realized at that moment, in the jazz club, that Sonny knows what he wants to do and he’ll be right there watching him being proud. The kind of ethics that Sonny seems to follow in this story is the ethics of virtue. Sonny knows the kind of person he wants to be, he knows what he wants to do. He wants to turn his life around from negative to positive and music does that for him. Sonny’s brother decided in this same scene, to allow himself to see what Sonny was talking about, what he was passionate about. I believe that Sonny’s brother follows the ethic of utilitarianism. He made the right choice at the end of the story to support his brother and his music career, which would produce the most good, him protecting Sonny like he promised his mother and the both of them having a better relationship with one another.

In conclusion, support is all we need. We just want the ones we love, to see what we’re doing with our lives and that it’s making us happy. We all want to protect those who we love from all the dangers and harm the world offerers with no warning. It’s already difficult enough in the world and we don’t want our young ones growing up neglecting us because we didn’t like their life choices, or them not going to the same college as you did, or they wanting to pursue music as Sonny did. It really is about the support and love we can offer in a world like this because it can go a very long way. 

Works Cited: 

  1. James Baldwin’s “Sonny’s Blues” (1957)

https://www.sjsu.edu/faculty/wooda/2B-HUM/Readings/Baldwin-Sonnys-Blues.pdf

  1. Scanlan, S. (2020) Five types of Ethics https://openlab.citytech.cuny.edu/profscanlan-english2001-fiction-f2020/files/2020/11/Five-types-of-Ethics-fall-2020.docx