41 pages • 1 hour read
Esi EdugyanHalf-Blood Blues
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2011A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
The Need for Resolution of/Redemption from Past Mistakes
Signs that Sid is uncomfortable with his past appear from the start. His recollection of the day that Hiero was captured by the Nazis foregrounds Sid’s insecurities, including his sense that he could or should have intervened. Meanwhile, some of the elderly Sid’s comments take on extra significance in light of his own regrets. When he is “shocked” to see “a disease long-conquered showing up in [Chip’s] features,” we can only assume that he’s also thinking of himself in his subsequent observation that “it’s like that, I guess, when the past come to collect what you owe” (22). A passing comment from a cab driver about living without regrets also strikes him. Later, at the premiere of the documentary, which promises to take him into the past, a “strange dark feeling” (55) of foreboding overwhelms him. Similarly, his entire journey to visit Hiero is marked by a mounting sense of dread.
Yet Sid’s search for resolution is not fruitless. At one point on their way to meet Hiero, Chip reminds Sid, “It’s early yet. It’s always early, while you still alive” (194). When he finally reunites with Hiero and realizes that Hiero knows nothing of his regrettable actions, Sid must decide whether to confess. After some hesitation, he decides to tell Hiero everything at the risk of destroying their friendship. The night before he does so, he vividly dreams of Hiero’s suffering in the concentration camps. Only then does he acknowledge the terrible cost of his actions, and only in telling Hiero and Chip what he did does he begin to take responsibility for them.
This choice paves the way for healing. Chip acknowledges that what Sid did was wrong but also encourages him with the perspective that, although his shortsightedness came at a huge price, it was never his intent to hurt Hiero. Hiero, meanwhile, responds to Sid’s revelations with surprising serenity, granting Sid hope that their relationship can be mended. Ultimately, Sid can only begin productively dealing with his regrets by bringing them into the open rather than suppressing them.
The Arbitrary, Cultural Nature of Racial Prejudice
In some sense, racial prejudice and the discrimination that inevitably follows are all but universal in the world of Half-Blood Blues, as Sid and his friends experience both just about everywhere they go. In another sense, however, the varied types and degrees of prejudice they endure reveal such prejudice to have foundations not in any universal law but rather in the subjective constructs of culture.
As youths in Baltimore, Sid and Chip are subject to Jim Crow discrimination, meaning that they are excluded from certain privileges within a system of segregation. At the same time, Sid is aware that some of his relatives live elsewhere as whites and even recalls dreaming of “showing up there, breaking up their parade” (39), an impulse that he later questions. The fact that other people with virtually identical ancestry (Sid, his parents, and the relatives in question are all one-quarter black) can pass as white while Sid and his family do not shows just how arbitrary the “rules” governing the system of segregation could be.
Although Sid and Chip go to Berlin in the hopes of leaving persecution behind, they soon find themselves subject to other, equally arbitrary patterns of discrimination. As talented American musicians, they are initially treated reasonably well in Germany. As Chip explains, “If you a black American, well, you treated alright. If you a foreign student or singer or something, sure. They ain’t want you goin back home talkin bad bout their little utopia” (260). Sid notices, however, that people are more likely to approach him than his friends with darker skin. Meanwhile, his friendship with Hiero reveals a darker side of the Nazis’ racial hierarchy: Black Germans, those who have mixed African and European ancestry, are considered to be an abomination, even a “cultural stain” (54), as an interviewee in the documentary about Hiero explains. Thus, even though Hiero’s talent exceeds that of his American friends, the supposedly meritocratic systems breaks down when it conflicts with the Nazis’ ideals of racial supremacy, and Hiero becomes as much of a target as the Jews. Indeed, Hiero and Paul are both attacked on the night that the bandmembers get into a fight with Nazi soldiers.
Things don’t improve as much as might be expected when they go to Paris, especially for Hiero, who is once again forced into hiding as the French officials begin to round up German nationals as the Nazi invasion draws nearer. Sid and Chip learn to avoid speaking German in public. Although it could be argued that such precautions are only necessary because of the war, it seems likely that war itself does not create such prejudices—it only heightens and reveals them. Fittingly, it is in Paris that Hiero decides to title his record “Half-Blood Blues”—he has realized that multiple aspects of his mixed heritage are susceptible to prejudice under different cultural conditions.
The Roles of Genius and Experience in Producing and Perceiving Art
Edugyan’s text offers a nuanced exploration of the relationship between natural talent and life experience in producing and appreciating art. At one end of the spectrum, it can seem that arbitrarily allocated talent entirely determines an individual’s ability to produce meaningful art. As Sid puts it, “It ain’t fair that I struggle and struggle to sound just second-rate, and the damn kid just wake up, spit through his horn, and it sing like nightingales” (272). This notion is complicated by the question of experience. According to Panther Brownstone, who makes an impression on young Sid, “You got to have experience to make jazz. I ain’t never heard no one under eighteen even sound like he know which end of his instrument to hold” (203). However, Brownstone notes some rare exceptions to that rule, saying that such talents come along “maybe twice a century” (202). The question, then, is whether Hiero constitutes such a talent, or whether he requires life experience to attain the highest levels of artistic expression.
Sid spends much of the novel resisting the notion that Hiero is so talented, describing his playing as empty, showy, or immature. However, this raises a further difficulty in determining the relative value of talent and experience: Who is to say when an artist attains true greatness? Beauty is, after all, in the eye of the beholder, or the ear of the listener. Paul and Ernst certainly consider Hiero a genius from day one, with Ernst even moved to tears after Hiero’s first performance.
In the end, the question becomes something of a moot point, for Hiero both possesses natural talent and passes through difficult life experiences. Perhaps more significant is the way that Sid’s changing perception of Hiero’s musical artistry reflects changes in Sid himself, which may be Edugyan’s way of pointing to the capacity of great art and true genius to both impress us with its virtuosity and teach us something about ourselves.
