Jazz and Blues

Story: Sonny's Blues 1950's
Author: James Baldwin (1924-1987)
Central Character: Although the story is narrated by Sonny's unnamed older brother, Sonny is the most important character. Sonny is described in a common stereotype of the time, a stereotype that his own brother holds until the end of the story: the heroin-addicted jazz musician. Sonny has just been arrested for "peddling and using heroin'' and must do time in a prison upstate. As the story progresses, however, the reader learns more about Sonny's life before the arrest.
Other Characters:
Creole
Creole is a bass player who leads the band that Sonny plays in at the end of the story. He functions as a kind of father figure for Sonny; he believes it is his purpose to guide Sonny through his blues and teach him how to turn them into music. He also attempts to show Sonny's brother how to understand Sonny.
Sonny's Brother
The experiences of Sonny are shown through the eyes of the story's narrator, Sonny's brother. The unnamed narrator is a high school algebra teacher who grew up in Harlem and is fully aware of his community's dark side and tries his best to keep his distance from the trouble. He seems to have difficulty expressing his ideas and emotions and only when his young daughter dies, does he finally open up and write to his brother. As much as it shows that he cares for Sonny, he has a hard time believing that his brother has truly changed.
Setting:
"Sonny's Blues" takes place in Harlem during the early 1950s. The city plays a pretty important role in the narrative, since part of the reason Sonny turns to drugs is to escape the feeling of being trapped by his surroundings. There are people suffering from poverty, prostitutes who have been beaten up walk the streets, young men feel the weight of limited possibilities, and "find themselves smothering in their houses" (72). This is a bleak place.
As Sonny and the narrator are driving back to the narrator's apartment (after Sonny gets out of jail), the narrator starts to really think about the streets in this neighborhood where he and Sonny grew up:
We hit 110th Street and started rolling up Lenox Avenue. And I'd known this avenue all my life, but it seemed to me again, as it had seemed on the day I'd first heard about Sonny's trouble, filled with a hidden menace which was its very breath of life. (73)
It's as if the Harlem streets have a life of their own and contain within them an inherent danger that lives just below the surface. This worries the narrator, since he's the one bringing Sonny back to this place, "back into the danger he had almost died trying to escape" (76). Far from being mere background, Harlem is as much a character in this story as any of the actual people.
But "Sonny's Blues" is also set in a smaller world within Harlem: the nightclub where Sonny plays at the end of the story. This is a far less menacing place. In fact, this dark, smoky little club is a refuge for Sonny. It's a place where he can (at least for a little while) forget about being a drug addict, forget about what awaits him outside, and face his suffering head-on by losing himself in his music. Sonny is a sort of celebrity in the club and the people there want him to be OK; they want him to play the music he's so good at playing. The club is like a tiny, shining light in the middle of the darkness that surrounds Sonny every day.

Narrator:
"Sonny's Blues" is told in the first person from the point of view of an unnamed narrator who, we find out, is Sonny's brother. The narrator in this story is an interesting figure. He's mostly telling us Sonny's story, but this is also his story. "Sonny's Blues" is not just about Sonny's decisions and struggles but also about how they affect the narrator. This story is as much about family and brotherhood and the relationship between these two men as it as about the single character of Sonny.

Tone:
The tone of the story is the story is sympathetic because the writer seems to feel a great deal of sympathy for Sonny. He doesn't just write bad things about Sonny and focus on all his mistakes and flaws as some writers would. He focuses the story on the why's and hows he came to be and searches for the root of his problems to address the readers. For example, at one point in the story Sonny discusses to his brother, the narrator, why he felt he had to do drugs. "It's not so much to play. It's to stand it, to be able to make it at all. On any level." He frowned and smiled: "In order to keep from shaking to pieces." (201) Baldwin presents us with numerous passages in which Sonny or other characters try to make some sense of his addiction. This helps us understand what he is going through that causes him to resort to drugs. The fact that Sonny is also a musician creates even more opportunity for sympathy, since we see that Sonny really has a lot at stake – he has a lot to lose when he's unable to play the piano.
And yet Baldwin is very honest about how ugly drug addiction is. He may be sympathetic to Sonny, but he doesn't romanticize drug use. It's dirty and nasty and painful. It makes Sonny sick of his own smell. And it tears the family apart for many years. Baldwin manages to convey his sympathy without condoning Sonny's decisions.

Symbols:
Jazz music symbolizes different things to different characters in this story. The narrator doesn't know anything about jazz. He associates it with a certain "element" of people, people he doesn't want his brother hanging out with. He lumps jazz together with drugs and Sonny's addiction, blaming the jazz lifestyle for turning Sonny into a heroin addict because he knows that some musicians have to get high in order to play. Jazz music makes the narrator angry and bitter. But for Sonny, jazz music is like a ray of light. He loves playing it and listening to it. It's the one really positive thing in his life. Jazz music represents passion and escape for Sonny. The very people the narrator negatively associates with jazz are the ones who function as a sort of second family for Sonny. While jazz is alien to the narrator, it's comfortable and comforting for Sonny. At the end of the story, jazz functions as a bridge between the two brothers. When the narrator goes to see Sonny play, he learns something about his brother that he's never understood before. When he hears Sonny play, he finally starts to appreciate the wonder and terror of being a musician.
Images of ice appear at various points in the story, symbolizing fear, dread, and the feeling of being unsettled or shocked. For example, when the narrator first reads about Sonny's arrest, he describes the feeling as follows:
A great block of ice got settled in my belly and kept melting there slowly all day long. . .. It was a special kind of ice. It kept melting, sending trickles of ice water all up and down my veins, but it never got less. The narrator can't escape this icy feeling, which returns as "icy dread" when Sonny first gets to his apartment after getting out of jail. We often think of ice (and cold) as causing discomfort, and this is precisely what happens when (figurative) ice appears in "Sonny's Blues."
Light appears in many forms throughout "Sonny's Blues" – as moonlight, as a spotlight, sometimes even as the absence of light. Light illuminates, both literally and figuratively. When Sonny and the narrator's mother tell the narrator about how their uncle passed away, she recalls a moonlit night and a moonlit road. In that moment she reveals a family secret to her son that he never knew about (the fact that he and Sonny had an uncle who was killed). When Sonny is playing in the club, the spotlight on him turns blue and the narrator experiences a sort of revelation about his brother. And when Sonny places the Scotch and milk above him on the piano in the final scene, the narrator says that it "glowed" , just as Sonny seems to be glowing in the light of his music.

Theme/Irony:
In "Sonny's Blues," a man finally comes to understand the darkness and suffering that consumes his brother, and he begins to appreciate the music that his brother uses to calm those blues.
Suffering
The main theme of "Sonny's Blues" is suffering, particularly the sufferings of black people in America. Although Baldwin presents only one example of overt racism in the story—the death of Sonny's uncle under the wheels of a car driven by a group of drunken whites—the repercussions of the treatment received by black people is omnipresent. Sonny's father is tormented by.. 1. The theme of suffering – since the main characters are African Americans, they suffer from being unaccepted in society. Sonny expresses his sufferings in music. His brother prefers to keep his sufferings inside. 2. The theme of irony – the irony is presented everywhere in the story, e.g. both brothers grew up under the same roof, but they are absolutely different.

There are many things we learn of Sonny and his nameless brother in Sonny's Blues. We learn they're mannerisms, hobbies, occupations, and even their addictions. It seems we learn nearly everything about the pair; minus the narrators name, as previously stated. Hearing of their histories and the pains they've under gone, we see how they deal with their pain, which often truly tells character. Sonny's Blues isn't a story of two brothers living in a rough city; one of whom is a talented musician. The story is so much more, it's the point of tossing the main two stereotypes of African-Americans in an urban environment. The brothers cope with their own suffering and the suffering around them in two very different, but not uncommon ways.
The story is told through the eyes of Sonny's older brother, who's name we never disclose. What we do know is the narrators currently a algebra teacher, married with kids, and some of his history that gives us insight to the mans personality.

As a young man he lost both parents, first his father the later his mother. After high school he went into the military. While in the service he had a rocky relation ship with his brother, Sonny. With the information presented to us through the story, it shows the narrator had a difficult child hood, but he rose above it and kept on the straight and narrow. He's got family, a career, and some stability which is much more than most have in the ghetto's of Harlem. The narrator serves us an image of himself as an orderly man with a ground perspective of things, he's a realist. Which separates him quite drastically from his brother Sonny.
Sonny, the brother, seems to be the main character of the story. It's told through his brother's point of view, but even that seems to revolve around Sonny. Sony seems to be the typical stereotype of a black youth in urban setting. With his dreams and aspirations far from reach and revolving around the typically "wrong type" of...

Plot Analysis:
Initial Situation
The narrator reads in the newspaper about Sonny's arrest for using and selling heroin.
This discovery sets off the action in the rest of the story and causes the narrator to reflect on his and Sonny's pasts. Since Sonny's drug use is so central to the narrative, it's fitting that we (and the narrator) learn of this right off the bat.

Conflict
Sonny and the narrator have their first argument about Sonny wanting to become a jazz musician.
Although chronologically this takes place before the initial situation in the story, we don't read about it until after the fact. This is the primary conflict between Sonny and the narrator (at least at first). Sonny wants to be a jazz piano player, but the narrator thinks this is a waste of his life. Their inability to see eye to eye on this is what causes so much strife between the brothers.

Complication
Sonny moves into the narrator's apartment.
Although this may seem like a resolution, Sonny and the narrator are both forced to face some difficult things about themselves and about their relationship with each other when they're living under the same roof. The narrator also has access to Sonny's things because his room is right there, so he finds himself struggling over whether or not to trust Sonny, whether or not he should search his room, and whether or not Sonny has recovered.

Climax
Sonny and the narrator argue in the apartment.
This is where it all comes out: the narrator's anger at Sonny's drug use, Sonny's anger at feeling abandoned, the narrator's inability to understand Sonny as a musician, and Sonny's frustration at all this. This is their big, loud, brutally honest argument. And this is also when Sonny invites his brother to come hear him play, which may or may not provide some resolution for them and for the story.

Suspense
The moment just before Sonny starts to play the piano.
Sonny is nervous, the narrator is nervous, the other musicians seem unsure, and the audience doesn't know what to expect. Only Creole seems confident that everything will be OK once Sonny starts playing.

Denouement
Sonny makes it through the first set and starts playing the second.
Sonny starts to calm down and to feel more sure of himself. He starts to sound like himself again, too. He finally lets go and loses himself in his music once again.

Conclusion
The narrator sends Sonny a drink
This drink is the narrator's way of saying that he finally gets it – how important music is to Sonny, how necessary to his life. He finally understands what the other people in the club seem to already know about Sonny, and the implication is that the two men will finally find some peace in their relationship.

This story has one of those nifty titles that does a lot and means a lot in just a couple of words. The phrase "Sonny's blues" doesn't appear until the very end of the story, when the narrator is watching Sonny play at the club. But really, the whole story is about the blues that Sonny must battle as he struggles to recover from drug addiction. He has the blues from growing up in a tough Harlem neighborhood. He has the blues from trying to escape his childhood, from being frustrated as a musician, from the narrator's long silence even when he knew Sonny was hurting. This story is literally the story of Sonny's sadness.
But we think there might also be something else going on in the title, too. When it all comes down to it, Sonny is a musician. Playing the piano tortures him, drives him, and keeps him going all at the same time. Music is really Sonny's lifeblood. And the music he plays at the end of the story is "the blues." As Creole reminds Sonny and the rest of the musicians at the club, what they're playing is not happy music – it's soulful music, it's "blues" music. So, yes, the "blues" in the title might be about Sonny's emotions, but they might also refer to the music he plays. And for Sonny, these are really one and the same. Kinda cool how a two-word title can do all this, right?

(4) Base Camp
In some ways, "Sonny's Blues" is a pretty straightforward story. It's about family struggles, drug addiction, and music. But there are some other themes that are pretty easy to miss if you're not familiar with James Baldwin's larger body of work and the issues he focused on in his writing. For example, the biblical reference to the cup of trembling at the end of the story isn't something most of us would look for if we didn't know that Baldwin was a preacher himself at one point and that he struggled with his religious identity for much of his life. And if we're not familiar with the difference between Louis Armstrong and Charlie Parker's music, we might not get why Sonny is so upset when his brother lumps them together. This isn't to say that we can't still get something rich and meaningful from the story if we don't know this stuff, but it does make mean that we could miss some things. That's why "Sonny's Blues" is a little tougher than it might seem on the surface.
What’s Up With the Ending?
At the very end of the story, the narrator has come to watch Sonny play piano at a nightclub, and it seems that he finally sees how talented his brother is. But more importantly, he also seems to see that music is a part of Sonny. It's something he has to have in his life in order to function. As a gesture of this new understanding, the narrator sends Sonny a drink, which he places above him on the piano as he plays. This creates a striking image for the narrator: "For me, then, as they began to play again, it glowed and shook above my brother's head like the very cup of trembling" (239).
The "cup of trembling" is a biblical reference from the Book of Isaiah 51:22 (the actual quote from the King James Bible is:
Thus saith thy Lord the Lord, and thy God that pleadeth the cause of his people, Behold, I have taken out of thine hand the cup of trembling, even the dregs of the cup of my fury; thou shalt no more drink it again.
Scholars and critics tend to interpret this passage as God's expression of forgiveness and humankind's opportunity for redemption – God has essentially removed the temptation that initially created his anger. For this reason literary critics often read the ending of "Sonny's Blues" as a symbol of Sonny's redemption. Some even liken Sonny to the Prodigal Son in the Bible, who leaves his home and squanders his life but finally returns and redeems himself after seeing the error of his ways. Perhaps Sonny has finally been able to conquer his addiction. Perhaps his brother has truly forgiven him for screwing up his life and for causing their family so much pain. Perhaps Sonny has redeemed himself.
But with any good story (and we think this is one), there's more than one way to read the ending. Is it possible that Sonny's shaky performance in the club suggests that he is still shaky in other parts of his life as well? Is it possible that this single moment at the end of the story is just that – a moment? Will Sonny go back to using drugs? After all, he does tell the narrator that deep down he's still the same person, haunted by the same demons, and that Harlem is still the same rough place that turned him to drugs in the first place. And they both agree that there is an almost inescapable amount of suffering in the world.
We'd probably all like to think that Sonny really does recover, that he's able to face down his "blues," and the text definitely supports this interpretation. But it's important to be open to other interpretations too (and we think that's what's pretty awesome about literature anyway). So maybe Sonny will always be dealing with the "blues." Or maybe there's a whole other way to read the ending that we haven't even thought of. What do you think?

Baldwin maintains narrator whose interest and judgment remain shadowed by ignorance. reinforce the lack of communication between family members. Baldwin writes “Sonny’s Blues” in fragmentized collages of misery and experience molded into Sonny and the narrator’s perspective of him The narration style is reminiscent of deliberately created perspectives. Also, the compelling notion that these protagonists are themselves symbols and irrevocably signify those easily inflicted by societal threat is maintained by Baldwin . use narration to represent societal temptation by introducing complex elaborative diction versus constraint straightforward language. Vices in context to these short stories characterize a grave moral failure. Vices often reflect the presence of a forthcoming restriction and the structure between these stories are reminiscent of that restriction. Restriction not implying withholding of form and reducing structure to reflect a certain meaning, but rather the result of how the narrators feel; therefore, becoming the vice (consider for example how in “Sonny’s Blues” Baldwin turned music into the narrator’s vice—a different medium of expression unfamiliar to the narrator). The final summation in these two short stories is the same in such a way that the threat becomes the lack of communication and is prevalent throughout both stories as a crucial theme. Due to the variety of possible analyses regarding the similarities between these two short stories, the underlying prevalent themes at work concern the characterizations of societal temptations, vices, and threats in relation to narration, structure, and theme respectively that describe why Baldwin’s narrator and Oates’s June were successful in overcoming social menace while Sonny and Connie were placed put under submission by social menace.

In both stories, narration becomes a key component in describing societal threat. Baldwin uses narration differently from Oates in that his approach is a more personal depiction of social menace whereas Oates illustrates a detached narrative perspective. In “Sonny’s Blues”, John is characterized as a self-absorbed individual. For instance, long before the narrator introduces who exactly Sonny is, the narrator expresses himself in the subjective I form countless times. Baldwin creates an interesting narrator when he states, “I couldn’t believe it: but what I mean by that is that I couldn’t find any room for it anywhere inside of me,” (Baldwin 92)—evidently, Baldwin creates a confused and uncertain narrator, which contributes to Baldwin’s narrative strategy (the reader is not quite sure exactly what to make of the narrator). Unlike Oates’s narrator, the tone is much more straightforward. For example, the detached narrator says, “and the rest of the time Connie spent around the house—it was a summer vacation” (Oates 38). In “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” the narrator draws attention to exactness precision. This exactness is reflective of Connie’s behaviour seeing as how she is merely fifteen years old and quite ignorant of her circumstances. However, narration-wise, “Sonny’s Blues” fulfills a narrator whose insight is elaborative and non-restrictive entirely of ignorance, yet that ignorance is foreshadowed in Sonny. This occurs when the narrator states carelessly, “I was trying to remember everything I’d heard about dope addiction and I couldn’t help watching Sonny for signs” (Baldwin 97). Consequently, because of his ignorance towards Sonny, readers are left with a dramatic monologue-like representation of the narrator depicted as an absorbed controlling individual. For instance, Baldwin’s narrator says, “I simply couldn’t see why on earth he’d want to spend his time hanging around nightclubs, clowning around on bandstands, while people pushed each other around a dance floor” (Baldwin 101). On the other hand, Connie in “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” is given a detached narrative sympathy—“Connie liked the way he was dressed, which was the way all of them dressed” (Oates 42). Due to the subject matter of “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” Oates justifies Connie’s actions in detached narrative tone to emphasize Connie’s simplicity whereas Baldwin in “Sonny’s Blues” uses elaborative syntax to develop John’s confused mind state.

Narrative syntax, structure and vices become symbolic probable assertions by Baldwin and Oates in these two short stories. An author’s decision to create a distinct stylistic narrative prose adversely affects the structure of a story. For instance, Baldwin creates “Sonny’s Blues” as though it were a structural mimic of Sonny as a character. Thus, Baldwin creates a narrator who simply cannot perceive Sonny adequately and adversely creates an ill-informed narrator. Hence, the structure becomes a vice for the narrator because of his reluctance to move shape into the structure. Blues music in “Sonny’s Blues” is symbolic because of its background relating to the casual undertones of vernacular language and its attempt to inform communities tainted by mishap. Thus, the structure of a blues piece is non-coordinated and therefore lacks a defined structure. This deliberately masterminded structure becomes a vice for the narrator because of his lifestyle as an ordered individual—the structure is endearing in that the narrator, as an algebra teacher (math symbolizes order and the narrator functions under mathematical constants) fails to realize Sonny does not conform to order and because the structure is a depiction of variables incalculable by math, the narrator lacks a thorough understanding of Sonny. For example, when the narrator writes a letter to Sonny, the narrator says in very factual pretenses, “Here’s what he said” (95), whereas, in the letter, Sonny writes with emotional undefined vernacular structure: You don’t know how much I needed to hear from you. I wanted to write you many a time but I dug how much I must have hurt you and so I didn’t write. But now I feel like a man who’s been trying to climb up out of some deep, real deep and funky hole and just saw the sun up there, outside. I got to get outside. (Baldwin 95) The resultant factor is the meaning gained from these structural formalities Baldwin constructed to reflect the narrator’s lack of understanding and his ill-informed interpretation of his brother Sonny. However, in “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” Oates establishes a character different from the stiff structure of the short story. For instance, the structure of “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” is precisely organized including the narrative perspective. Oates deliberately created a narrator who simply stated the facts of Connie’s situation without the excess elaboration to reinforce a fixed structure on a sporadic mind. Consider when the narration already begins directly and straightforwardly with, “Her name was Connie” (Oates 34) explicitly intending an ordered precise introduction whereas Connie’s vernacular attraction to Arnold Friend is reminiscent of her age, “‘Don’tcha wanta see what’s on the car? Don’tcha wanta go for a ride?” (Oates 42). For Connie, the structure becomes a vice and she is entrapped as a result because of the third person limited omniscient narrative strategy employed by Oates rather than first person subjective narration; hence, reducing sympathy and stating the blatant facts as if recounting a case a log. These structural vices become a deliberate tool Baldwin and Oates equally utilize to reflect narrative and character traits. Baldwin’s narrator and Oates’s June did not follow the structures of their respective short stories unlike Sonny and Connie and so they were successful in overcoming social menace.

Thematically, both these two stories share the ideal problem of communication. This is reflected in the straightforward prose of Oates “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?”; for example, readers are already aware that “Everything about [Connie] had two sides to it” (Oates 36) and “Connie wished her mother was dead and she herself was dead and it was all over” (Oates 35). Oates already reveals to the reader the nature of Connie’s fragility. The narrator in “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” states, “If June’s name was mentioned her mother’s tone was approving, and if Connie’s name was mentioned it was disapproving” (Oates 38) already creates the atmosphere of rejection and alienation which is sociologically a perfect standpoint that could potentially develop vulnerability. This vulnerability is emphasized throughout the story with depictions of Connie looking into the eyes of Arnold Friend: “He grinned so broadly his eyes became slits and she saw how think the lashes were, thick and black as if painted with a black tarlike material” (Oates 45). Arnold in “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” symbolizes the persona of social menace. His seduction and his overcoming of Connie’s innocent fragility contribute greatly to her lack of success in overcoming the embodiment of social menace—Arnold Friend. Further depictions of social menace is shown when the narrator says about Arnold Friend, “His sunglasses told nothing about what he was thinking” (Oates 45)—Oates depicts social menace as cowering behind the blackness of Arnold’s glasses and that social menace can strike at any instance. Communications occurs best when there is some kind established bond and in both stories that foundation is a lacking presence in both families. In “Sonny’s Blues” the foundation for communication to gradually build up is also lacking. The narrative form is reminiscent of this lack of communication. The narrator in “Sonny’s Blues” uses sharp diction to reinforce his lack of communication with his imprecise vernacular brother Sonny. Considering the approach the narrator uses when talking to Sonny, there seem to be times when the narrator is reluctant to speak to him and that the narrator seeks a third party to get insight from him: “I read about it in the paper” (Baldwin 91) and “I read about Sonny’s trouble in the spring” (Baldwin 105). The crater separating Sonny and the narrator is so very large that the narrator cannot simply approach Sonny with the questions he wishes to ask. Darkness is a recurring theme throughout “Sonny’s Blues”. Strategically, Baldwin creates a neighborhood ridiculed with dark valleys and aisles similar to the analogy Oates used to convey Arnold’s social menace: “So we drove along, between the green of the park and the stony, lifeless elegance of hotels and apartment buildings, toward the vivid, killing streets of our childhood” (Baldwin 96). Similarly, music is equally mentioned throughout both these stories as a medium of escape. Oates’s Connie listens to Bobby King, a Jazz melodist whereas Baldwin’s Sonny beautifies the improvisation of blues tradition. Music and gripping blackness of social menace are repeated motifs throughout both these two short stories and they explain why exactly June and the narrator of “Sonny’s Blues” have overcome social menace whereas Sonny and Connie, because of neglect and alienation, have fallen victim to social menace.
A thorough analysis of Baldwin’s and Oates’s short stories reveal that social temptations, vices and threats comparatively with narration, structure and themes respectively explain why June and Baldwin’s narrator triumphed over social menace while Sonny and Connie were enveloped by it. Narrative style contributed greatly to the accurate depiction of social temptations in that Baldwin used a precise narrator lacking emotion whereas when viewed through Sonny’s perspective, Sonny engaged in emotional discourse. Similarly, Oates utilizes an inadequately intellectually developed teenager with a harsh unsympathetic narrative style to further emphasize the nature of the subject. Structurally, Baldwin utilizes disorder and non-chronological depictions of Sonny’s lifetime into a theatrical blues representation which adversely affects the narrator’s misunderstanding of Sonny. Oates’s structural use of “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” depicted a fixed unchanging chronological ordered story for an individual lacking a sense of order, that is Connie—a fourteen year old girl. Like- mindedly, Baldwin and Oates establish a structural vice incomprehensible by the Baldwin’s narrator and Oates’s Connie. As a summation of structural and narrative styles, threats and its relation to theme tie closely together in these two short stories. The threat for both Sonny and Connie become neglect and the resultant factor is alienation from family which preludes to lack of communication—all viable themes in both these stories. Simply, the young male and female protagonists fall victim to societal threats because of their driven alienation from their families and from their closest friends and relatives which later develops a sense of vulnerability. Social menace occurs when one is gravely vulnerable of which Baldwin and Oates spectacularly depict.