Seventieth Birthday Celebration Toni Morrison Analysis

top and be anything they want” (Ellison 55). The emotions portrayed through the music were able to develop a fight within the slave population. The ability to understand each other through music was a powerful connection that was uncreatable in any other way. Similar to Douglass’ narrative, Baldwin was also able to illustrate the connections that were made through the use of music.
In Baldwin’s piece, Sonny is unable to communicate his suffering with his brother and the people within the community without the use of music. Sonny is unable to connect with his brother throughout the story. He denies to believe Sonny’s life as a drug addict, “I couldn't believe it: but what I mean by that is that I couldn't find any room for it anywhere inside
Therefore, Sonny’s brother is incapable of understanding the pain that Sonny is going through without music. Music’s power over language becomes a key contributor to the brother’s relationship. Toni Morrison speaks to the power of music at Chinua Achebe’s Seventieth Birthday Celebration, “The power of the music would overwhelm the language. Language must stand alone” (Morrison). The power of blues was much more powerful than anything Sonny would be able to say. In order to depict the pain and sorrow that Sonny is feeling he calls his brother to listen, “You can't talk it and you can't make love with it, and when you finally try to get with it and play it, you realize nobody's listening. So you've got to listen. You got to find a way to listen" (Baldwin 431). Sonny believes the only way for his brother to understand his suffering is by listening to his music. As Sonny’s brother starts to listen to the music he starts to understand the suffering that Sonny has gone through. During the final scene, for the first time, Sonny’s brother listens to him, “Yet, there was no battle in his face now, I heard what he had gone
During their childhood, Sonny and his brother are trapped in the city of Harlem, a city of drugs and poverty. A city where the community must team up in order to survive, but often fails to come together. The narrator depicts the inescapabilty of Harlem as he brings his brother back to Harlem, “Some escaped the trap, most didn't. Those who got out always left something of themselves behind, as some animals amputate a leg and leave it in the trap” (Baldwin 419). The two brothers were trapped in a life surrounded with pain and discrimination due to the surroundings of Harlem. Sonny is brought back to the environment that he was trying to escape. He is unable to live with the realities of Harlem. His environment engulfs him as he develops a drug habit that many of the characters in the story can relate to. The only way he is able to escape the sufferings of reality is through the use of drugs. His drug use dissolves the inequalities that he faced while in Harlem and as an African American during the period, making them unrecognizable for brief moments. Similarly, Sonny’s brother reflects on the hardships that he shares with his brother, “Yet, as the cab moved uptown through streets which seemed, with a rush, to darken with dark people, and as I covertly studied Sonny's face, it came to me that what we both were seeking through our separate