Music plays a prominent role in both “Sonny’s Blues” and “How It Feels to Be Colored Me” because it allowed them to find their freedom. During “Sonny’s Blues”, Sonny takes all the hurt and misery that he went through, and displayed it through the art of music. Zora in “How It Feels to Be Colored Me” expresses her freedom by listening to jazz music to escape her reality.
Music saved Sonny’s life because he saw it as a breakthrough from all the pain and negativity he endured. For example, during “Sonny’s Blues”, Sonny got caught up in the use of heroin and was sent to jail for it. His relationship with the narrator, his brother, was not the best. They never really saw each other eye to eye. For a while, the brother did not speak nor see Sonny until after the death of his child. The brother was then reunited with Sonny and grew a semi okay relationship. Sonny used music to channel a voice that he could not let out from within. When Sonny tells his brother “Sometimes, you know, it was actually when actually I was most out of the world, I felt that I was in it, that I was with it, really, and I could play or I didn't really have to play, it just came out me, it was there” (Baldwin 111), the narrator …show more content…
During the two short stories, each was able to make a connection to the beat, sounds and melodies of jazz music like none other. Zora Hurston “How It Feels to Be Colored Me” voiced her love for freedom through listening to the sound of jazz music as well as Sonny in “Sonny’s Blues” expressed his emotions through playing jazz music, to escape the pain that held him down so he can be free and be heard.
Works Cited
Baldwin, James. “Sonny’s Blues.” The Norton Introduction to Literature. Shorter 12th ed. Ed. Kelly J. Mays. New York: Norton, 2016, pp. 93-115. Print.
Hurston, Zora. "How It Feels to Be Colored Me." The Norton Introduction