1. Sonny at this point in the story has been released from prison and has dragged his brother to the small café where he played over a year ago. Even though this may cause Sonny harm, he goes to his piano anyway. This quotation is near the end of the story of Sonny’s Blues. This is the narrator’s reaction to Sonny’s and his band playing the blues. It talks about how emotional he felt and the real reason for blues in the first place. “He and his boys up there were keeping it new, al the risk of ruin, destruction, madness, and death, in order to find new ways to make us listen. For, while the tale of how we suffer and how we are delighted, and how we triumph is never new, it always must be heard. There isn’t any other tale to tell, it’s the only light we’ve got in all this darkness.”
2. I feel that initially this is a passage that comes across quite easy to understand and connect with the rest of the story but yet as one looks closer, relating it more to personal life, it is easy to see that more questions than answers may arise from the text. Questions such as, “In what ways do I suffer?” or “Is the way I’m living my life causing people to stop and want to listen?” or even
3. I take this as being a way of trying to justify what Sonny went through in life. A way to explain his ordeal to make it so that even if he wishes his life to be better, he makes the best of it by helping others listen to his pain. The emotions described in the quote: suffering, delight, and triumph are all feelings that make us human. They are what link us and cause us to long for each other, another person just to be there and to understand. Even though all our pain and joy’s are not the same we still feel the brokenness or the leaps in another person. It is more like a cycle. When he was suffering, Sonny found his comfort in family and music. In turn, Sonny uses the blues as a way to express his pain to extend comfort to others. The saddest, maybe hardest part to grasp is that the suffering does not necessarily end. Even when This does not always come as easy as it seems though. It takes many years as the story depicts to get to this point. “He and his boys up there were keeping it new, al the risk of ruin, destruction, madness, and death, in order to find new ways to make us listen.” This quotation is good to remember because, even though they are helping people, they have not been taken out of the suffering and hard times themselves, they are just making the best of it. Sonny himself puts himself through the gravest danger, at the risk of trying drugs again and going back to prison from where he felt so trapped and like a slave. A lot of times, especially as Christians we expect the hard times to stop before we can move on and make a real difference. Truth is, the hard times never stop, but the one thing we can hold onto is that which we build our lives around and make them worth living for. This can relate to the phrase, “There isn’t any other tale to tell, it’s the only light we’ve got in all this darkness.” This shows that despite the heartache and pain, in the end it is the only thing that really makes life worth living. Everything else is shallow and fleeting away. MY favorite quote to support this would be “And he was giving it back, as everything must be given back, so that, passing through death, it can live forever.” Just the thought of his music and the difference he is making live in infamy even after he passes is enough I think to help him keep going and continue playing.
4. There are many example I can find to support my theory. On the same page, a little farther down, it talks about how Sonny’s playing “filled the air with life.” At some point in the story it describes Sonny as a “caged bird” trying to escape the effects that prison has had on him. It also continues to explain how that life, with his music, contained so many other lives there with him. In the same paragraph it further talks about how freedom was present when Sonny played. His laying down of burdens through music allowed others to do the same.
5. It is when one stops and really applies this passage to his or her life that they can see the complexity but also the relation to themselves as well. By asking such questions we discover ourselves more but also find ways to reach out to others through our own suffering, which is exactly what Sonny did. Also if one wants to take it even farther, this is what Christ called us to do. Take our burdens of life and use them to make us into who we are so that we may help others out along the journey of life. It is about finding one’s testimony and living it out in everyday life whether through art, or maybe work, or even Relating this to “it’s the only light we’ve got in all this darkness” this can relate to the binding of relationships that one’s testimony can bring about. That maybe even though the bad times were hard and rough this element of life makes it worth it.
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