Sonny Is A Heroin Addict

When his brother asked him what he wanted to do, he quickly responded “I’m going to be a musician.” There wasn’t any thinking needed; he knew exactly what he wanted in life. Though the brother’s point of view we get to see how unimpressed he was that Sonny wanted to be a musician. “It seemed -beneath him, somehow,” Sonny’s brother wrote. Though the story is well written in the point of view that it is told in, the weaknesses are that the readers don’t get to see everything through Sonny’s eyes and see his struggles.

When Sonny moves in with the family, he is given the expectation to finish college and stay out of trouble. Sonny has other ideas though and skips his classes to go to the local jazz club and play music. When the narrator first learns of Sonny’s antics he is very disappointed and is frustrated that Sonny continues to pursue a musical career. He believes it is part of the reason that Sonny has had so much trouble in the past and doesn’t believe it is a positive thing for his brother. Sonny is immediately kicked out and the two go for another extended period of time until talking again. Eventually the narrator has another change of heart and invites his brother to live with him again and Sonny agrees. The two struggle to communicate so one day Sonny invites the narrator to come watch him play at the jazz club and it is then that the narrator truly understands his younger brother. He is watching Sonny play with a group of musicians when he sees “Sonny’s face is trouble” (Baldwin 254) with the difficulty in

The narrator experienced a lot of problems throughout his life but managed to emerge victoriously from most of them. Even with this, he needs to support Sonny because this was his mother's dying wish. "The death of the narrator's daughter, Sonny's failure to fit in with his own family, a stint in the navy all serve to alienate the brothers, even after their mother made the narrator promise to keep an eye on young Sonny" (Smith 22). The fact that they were born in a harsh environment, society's views in regard to their racial background, and the fact that they experienced a lot of hardships during their lives all had a severe effect on the personalities of each of the brothers.

Suffering is a constant presence in “Sonny Blues.” Suffering, as the main character passionately argues, is “inescapable.” From the death of the narrator’s daughter to the cold blooded death of his uncle. Suffering dominates, and is symbolized, throughout the story. It does not only affect the main character, but others in his presence. Through music, drug use, death of the family members and through character relationships, the theme of suffering is expressed in the short story, “Sonny’s Blues.”

Stuck in his own mindset of what life should be like, he failed to see where his brother was coming from when questioning his future goals and plans. Sonny appeared to be a very sensitive person when the narrator questioned his views and dreams, he took offense and distant himself every time. After their mother died, Sonny was proposed to stay with Isabel (narrator's wife) family, he shot the idea down initially because he really wanted to break out the "trap" that was Harlem and relocate, "Look brother. I don't want to stay in Harlem no more, I really don't." There was something in his eyes I'd never seen before, some thoughtfulness, some worry all his own." (page 58 p11). This showed he knew the outcome if he stayed and didn't leave soon, even opting to join the armed forces if need be. He and his brother came to an agreement with the staying and finishing of school at Isabel's house with the piano. He tried to create happiness through music, which appears to be his escape to the harsh reality they lived in, every day on the piano trying to find an outlet. Eventually, he would stop going to school, and after an intense argument vanished altogether for years making a name for

James Baldwin’s “Sonny’s Blues” conveys how music serves as a form of communication, both at a small and large scale. Charting the development of the communication between Sonny and his brother allows us to view how the unnamed brother fails to meet Sonny at his emotional level by not understanding his pain. I argue that the text introduces Sonny as someone who “has never been talkative” to set the foundation for his growth from being voiceless to speaking both vibrantly and effortlessly through music (Baldwin 113). Over the course of the text, the unnamed brother begins to listen to Sonny to discover the connection between music and emotion. Therefore, the text argues that music is a crucial mechanism to communicate with one another—more specifically

The narrator goes to a club to watch Sonny and his band play. He begins to understand how deeply his brother feels and thinks, “I had never before thought of how awful the relationship must be between the musician and his instrument. He has to fill it, this instrument with the breath of life, his own.”(Baldwin 102) The music gives Sonny a chance to release his hopelessness and depression. Even though the narrator believes Sonny could have done more with his life if he had turned to classical music, he understands that Sonny is being true to who he really is. The anonymous brother, however, has not found

In the short story “Sonny’s Blues” Sonny the little brother of the narrator is a troubled blues musician with a nasty heroin addiction that lands him in jail. In the 50’s and 60’s drug abuse was a consistent problem among jazz musicians (Verity). Although Sonny ended up in jail his outlet was blues, he gave himself up to his music but that did not come at price with his family.

As well as in the short story Sonny’s Blues, the main character, Sonny, is being criticized by his brother. Since the very beginning, their mother told the oldest one, ‘’ you got to hold on to your brother ’’ and that’s what he wanted to do, but Sonny took a different path than he did. Sonny was the kind of guy that was heroin-addicted and a jazz musician, but his older brother didn’t see all these sides of him. We discover all these sides by the use of flashback of the author throughout the major parts of the story. The author didn’t want us to see Sonny like his older brother was seeing him, he wanted us to see him as a poor, un-accepted guy that needed to be listened by his peers. The brother didn’t accept the journey that Sonny had taken, but if he would of saw the actual Sonny, and stop hiding in the darkness, he would of accepted him faster and understand that Sonny only wanted to show that he could do good things not only drugs. In the middle of the story, there is a flashback were we learn that actually Sonny is more experienced about life than his older brother, because Sonny was in drugs and was really affected by Harlem( the city they stayed in when they were younger). The brother had a pretty easy life; he became a teacher and had a little family. This demonstrates that we need support from our peers, to be able to continue without taking bad choices.

something for Sonny it was because his mother had wanted him to, not because he

Sonny's brother is mired in silence. He attempts to shield himself from the realities that make up his existence, but

Although Sonny’s addiction to drugs and love for music seemed similar because he used both to escape reality, they were inevitably more different. The empowerment Sonny got from drugs was nothing but an illusion, unlike the strength he gained from music.

Furthermore, Sonny's individualism is a direct result of his unhappiness with conventional life. As a young man, Sonny is unable to get along with his father. He hates his home and school. His creative interest leads him to become isolated from his brother, who feels threatened by "his jazz-oriented life style and his continued attraction to Greenwich Village" (Albert 179). By the beginning of the story, Sonny has rejected his family and his home, constructing a new life as a musician and drug peddler in a new location foreign to the narrator.

Sonny’s passion in life was his love for music. This kept him going through his difficult times, “sometime you know, and it was actually when I was most out of the world, I felt I was in it, that I was with it, really, and I could play or didn’t really have to play.” He invited his brother to watch him play at a nightclub. Through the music Sonny played his life’s obstacles and triumph. His brother finally understood what Sonny went through and will continue to go through.

him, he realizes that Sonny is his own man. The trouble the narrator had with Sonny is