In “Sonny’s Blues” by James Baldwin, there is a recurring theme of darkness where the characters find themselves trapped in a society where they’re in poverty and discriminated against for the color of their skin. The characters feel that the usage of drugs helps them escape and cope with the pain they’ve endured from society. Based on the story, Baldwin’s critique on society is that Black people have been trapped in a dark place for generations, but that doesn’t mean they have to resort to drugs to deal with the darkness surrounding them. For instance, Sonny was able to leave behind the darkness that has been passed on for generations in his family. He was no longer dependent on drugs and he didn’t want to experience a fate that would result in him being killed the same way as his uncle. Instead, Sonny embraced his passion for playing jazz through the piano, processing an “artistic gift” according to Freudian terminology.
Sigmund Freud states, “If a person who is at loggerheads with reality possesses an artistic gift ( a thing that is still a psychological mystery to us ), he can transform his phantasies into artistic creations instead of into symptoms. In this manner, he can escape the doom of neurosis and by this roundabout path regain his contact with reality” (Freud, 2235). This proves Baldwin’s critique of society as Sonny was able to escape the drug lifestyle and focus on music that put him on a righteous path. In addition, by escaping the darkness around him, Sonny achieved his goal of wanting to play jazz on the piano, which is an example of the Freudian concept:wish fulfillment. Sonny’s method of manipulating his talents helped create a better lifestyle for himself despite still being surrounded by darkness.
“ So when she got to be thirty and was still single, we were not pleased exactly, but vindicated” (Faulkner).
I chose this quote because it represents the way of thinking during this time period. The townspeople were clearly not happy that Ms. Emily was 30 years old and not married, but since her father had run off all potential suitors for her, it was a justifiable reason as to why she is single. Because she had no husband, she was very lonely after the death of her father— her trauma.
“Strip his clothes off, then he’ll heal us, If he doesn’t, kill him dead! Only a doctor, only a doctor” (Kafka).
This quote from “A Country Doctor” is significant because it shows the doctor getting stripped of his clothes and forced into bed with the patient which parallels Rose being raped earlier. Both Rose and the doctor were taken advantage of with no consent and dehumanized, revealing the dreamwork mechanism: latent content. Freud states, “latent dream-thoughts… patient’s hidden complexes from his associations to his symptoms and memories”, meaning that it’s the hidden message of the dream (Freud 2222). In this case, because the doctor failed to save Rose, he had lapsed into self-absorption that prevented him from being able to take control of the events and himself. In addition, the doctor can only do as much as his medical knowledge allows him, but the villagers expect him to make the impossible possible as if he was God, which highlights the villagers’ repression and the application of displacement.
This image is a perfect representation of the short story “ Eight Bites” where the narrator’s identity seems to be established within her family as her mother, her sisters, and her daughter play a role in the woman she becomes. This image displays the conflict of the ideal body of a woman from two perspectives– the perfect “body” supported by societal expectation versus the perfect body that is realistic. The narrator struggles with the external image she presents to the world; she does not want others to see her as a fat woman but rather as normal like her mom and her sisters, who have undergone gastric bypass surgery. However, her daughter has the same body type as her and appreciates her curves while expressing her differ in opinion on the narrator’s idea of irreversible surgery. When describing her current body, she says she didn’t get her body from her mom because her mom “ always looked normal, not hearty or curvy or Rubenesque or Midwestern or voluptuous, just normal” (Machado, 3). By using the word normal, there is an emphasis placed on non-voluptuous bodies being acceptable as the standard by society, while implying that voluptuous bodies are the opposite. This explains the cultural mindset that the women in the story have adopted prompting them to commit to the surgery that will help them shed the fat they viewed as a burden.
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