A Close Reading of James Baldwin In Two Parts
Practicing deep attention with “The White Man’s Guilt" and "Sonny's Blues."
“But, obviously, I am speaking as an historical creation which has had bitterly to contest its history, to wrestle with it, and finally accept it, in order to bring myself out of it. My point of view certainly is formed by my history, and it is probable that only a creature despised by history finds history a questionable matter. On the other hand, people who imagine that history flatters them (as it does, indeed, since they wrote it) are impaled on their history like a butterfly on a pin and become incapable of seeing or changing themselves, or the world.” (Baldwin, Collected Essays, 723)
In this section of “The White Man’s Guilt,” Baldwin imbues the word ‘history’ with meaning that transcends the concept of an authoritative, written record of the past. For Baldwin, history is an ever-present force that acts unconsciously on most people, directing their every word and deed. As Baldwin writes in the paragraph preceding this passage, “It is to history that we owe our frames of reference, our identities, and our aspirations.” With this passage, however, he moves from a universal statement about history’s power over humans to its specific apprehension by white and Black Americans — or, as he frames the divide, the respective authors and subjects of recorded history. The paragraph illuminates how one’s ability or failure to “wrestle” with one’s history can liberate or paralyze an individual, respectively.
Baldwin writes in the first person, drawing on his personal confrontation with history to illustrate the demands of such a reckoning. The first word of the passage, “but,” signals that he aims to qualify or complicate his prior argument. Baldwin has previously described “the great force of history” in general terms, and will now acknowledge the role that his experiences and identity have played in forging this perspective. He does not describe himself as a human being, but as “an historical creation.” Baldwin proceeds to use the third-person person pronoun “it” for himself. The use of “it” and “creation” convey a sense of irony, as Baldwin echoes the dehumanization and paternalism that white Americans have imposed on Black people. Even as he writes from a personal perspective, his impersonal language evokes the sweeping, multi-generational struggle that Black Americans have collectively sustained throughout history.
The words “bitterly,” “contest,” and “wrestle” underline the hard-fought nature of this confrontation. Yet, Baldwin also writes of the need to “accept” his history to “bring myself out of it.” This second phrase conjures the image of a morass from which Baldwin has escaped. Acceptance of history, or the cessation of struggle, is the only path to freedom presented by the passage. By gaining clear-sighted awareness of the “appallingly oppressive and bloody history” (722) that his people have survived, Baldwin is relieved of a psychological and spiritual burden. His history has become visible, furnishing him with the knowledge to transcend the definitions it imposes on him.
In the next sentence, Baldwin again uses ironically dehumanizing language to reflect his role as a Black man subject to history. His self-description as “a creature despised by history” captures the entwinement of racism with the construction of race itself. By definition, a “creature” is not a human being. Baldwin therefore suggests that white people have ‘created’ Black people as a distinct, sub-human category. His inclusion of the word “despised” speaks to the active, hostile nature of this categorization, since race developed in tandem with racist ideas. Consequently, as the subject of arbitrary cruelty and classification across history, Black people could be more likely to interrogate the meaning of the past and its bearing on the present. Here, Baldwin’s distinction between people’s varying encounters with history comes into sharper focus. The passage suggests that examining one’s history is most likely to stem from necessity or survival, an idea that Baldwin explores in other essays and works of fiction. In “Stranger in the Village,” for example, he writes, “Most people are not naturally reflective any more than they are naturally malicious” (122). Enduring white apathy in the face of systemic racism against Black people could therefore be attributed to a “natural” preference for comfort and self-regard.
Yet, as the passage goes on to argue, unthinking faith in one’s prescribed history also limits the white Americans that it seems to protect. The choice of the verb “flatter” in the third sentence speaks to the superficial nature of the validation that white people receive from whitewashed history. The word “flatter” connotes insincerity and lack of substance; Baldwin thereby suggests that ‘traditional’ United States history — which glorifies white people while ignoring deep-rooted violence against Black people — does not hold up to scrutiny. Put simply, these historical narratives are lies. With understated humor, Baldwin notes in parentheses that the propagandistic flattery of white people in United States history is hardly surprising, “since they wrote it.” In Baldwin’s perspective, white people who endorse these lies do so at their peril. They become “impaled on their history like a butterfly on a pin,” incapable of action, self-awareness, or evolution. This simile introduces several associations into the passage. Butterflies are gentle, brightly colored animals capable of flight. They begin as caterpillars and undergo a dramatic transformation. Here, Baldwin evokes the potential for beauty and growth that resides in every human being. However, by clinging to lies about their history, white Americans have stripped themselves of this capacity. They are no longer free, dynamic beings capable of shaping the world around them, but static specimens pinned down by an insubstantial pin. In this sense, the lies about history that humans uncritically embrace wound not only the vulnerable but the authors of those very lies.
“He had made it his: that long line, of which we knew only Mama and Daddy. And he was giving it back, as everything must be given back, so that, passing through death, it can live forever. I saw my mother’s face again, and felt, for the first time, how the stones of the road she had walked on must have bruised her feet. I saw the moonlit road where my father’s brother died.” (Baldwin, Early Novels and Stories, 863)
At the conclusion of “Sonny’s Blues,” the narrator of the story watches his brother play the piano at a jazz club in Greenwich Village. Here, Baldwin’s luminous prose releases the emotional, psychological, and interpersonal tension that has mounted throughout the story. The passage’s ultimate concern is the conversion of intergenerational suffering into beauty, imagination, and empathy. Parallel to Sonny’s blues music, its poetic language moves from sorrow to grace, from senseless pain to transcendence.
The first sentence of the excerpt begins with a declaration of Sonny’s ownership over his and the narrator’s lineage. This reference to the family’s “long line” suggests that Sonny is not a lone musician, but the conduit of many generations whose lives find expression in his playing. Yet, the brothers’ lineage is nearly invisible — they know “only Mama and Daddy,” the very tip of their historical line. Sonny’s music therefore gives voice to his ancestors who have been excluded from the historical record, granting them visibility and life. At the same time, the sentence alludes to the transatlantic slave trade, which denied millions of Black people knowledge of their ancestry and separated children from their parents. Despite these barriers, Sonny gains possession of his family’s entire past, making it “his,” by playing the piano. Defying oppressive forces that seek to isolate him, Sonny’s blues anchor him to his ancestors’ joy, pain, and resistance.
Immediately following this statement, the narrator observes that Sonny is “giving it back, as everything must be given back.” Baldwin’s formulation here evokes debt or responsibility. Even as he lays claim to the lineage that nourishes him, Sonny must be generous toward his family and ancestors; his gift takes the form of music. The passage could thereby suggest that all artistic expression is bound to an existing dialogue from which it gains strength. In this sense, “Sonny’s Blues” opposes prevailing notions of artistic genius that credit individual consciousness with creating works of great beauty. In the narrator’s perspective, the family collectively sustains Sonny’s art. To continue, the narrator believes Sonny plays “so that, passing through death, it can live forever.” Although the referent of the word “it” is ambiguous, this phrase construes Sonny’s blues music as a means of attaining immortality, both for himself and his family. Music allows him to transcend his mortal body, while at the same time resurrecting those ancestors whose lives have fallen into obscurity. Of course, improvised jazz is an ephemeral art form that cannot “live forever,” and the tension between transience and permanence runs throughout the scene. The phrase “passing through death” captures this duality, for example. To “pass through” death could mean the evasion of death or, paradoxically, passage across the veil that separates life and death. Accordingly, Sonny’s immortality is at once real and illusory, while the life force with which he animates his family’s experiences is both faint and powerful.
The next two sentences shift from the narrator’s observation of Sonny’s music to its revelatory effects on the narrator. He first sees his mother’s face, perhaps because his visions proceed in chronological order and he has returned to his birth. Despite their musical origin, the narrator experiences these revelations through sight and not sound — he sees his mother’s face, rather than hearing her voice. His epiphany transcends language, consisting of music and imagery alone. This departure from language reflects a previous scene, in which Sonny struggles to communicate his pain through words: “He looked at me with great, troubled eyes, as though, in fact, he hoped his eyes would tell me things he could never otherwise say” (855). In both scenes, the eyes and face are superior instruments for transmitting emotion. For Sonny, music-making is perhaps the only method by which he can externalize the pain of incarceration, addiction, and his internal struggle.
By converting personal and familial pain into music, Sonny sparks deeper empathy and imagination in his brother. The narrator suddenly feels, “for the first time,” the sacrifice that his mother made for the family. He does not interpret her suffering from an intellectual remove but feels it as if her struggle were his own. He specifically conjures the image of stones on a road that “must have bruised her feet.” The narrator’s road metaphor and modal expression, “must have,” suggest that he is thinking creatively about his mother’s experiences. Sonny’s blues have catalyzed radical empathy in his brother. As in many of Baldwin’s novels and essays, the exemplar of great art in “Sonny’s Blues” functions at the interpersonal level, bridging the “chasm” (837) that separates the narrator from his brother and parents.
The final sentence of the excerpt underscores the power of Sonny’s music to alchemize family suffering into beauty. The narrator is transported to the scene of his uncle’s racist killing by a group of white men in a hit-and-run. Despite his uncle’s death taking place years before the narrator’s birth, he nonetheless gains access to the experience. As his mother says in a previous scene, “The car kept on a-going and it ain’t stopped till this day” (843). That is, the memory of the killing continues to haunt the family. His mother walks a metaphorical road, while the second road is literal, yet both reside in the narrator as inherited memory. Sonny’s blues do not so much produce these images as activate them in the narrator after a prolonged dormancy. Miraculously, his music converts the family’s suffering into a source of beauty. For example, the final sentence of the passage does not emphasize the racist violence that killed the narrator’s uncle, but “the moonlit road.” Here, Baldwin’s prose exalts the reader for the same reason that Sonny’s blues exalt the narrator: the family’s deep-rooted suffering is given poetic form and meaning, if only for the span of a piano riff.