Sonny's Brother Short Story Theme

At the end of the story we see how Sonny’s brother is finally seeing how much music means to him, but its sad

This is especially clear in the conversations between Sonny and his brother, where their exchanges represent their complicated relationship and final reunion by emulating the tension and conclusion seen in musical compositions. Character development is accelerated by music, which provides insights into the protagonists' inner life and their battles with trauma, identity, and atonement. Sonny's love of jazz turns into a vehicle for self-expression and self-learning that enables him to rise above the constraints of his situation and find comfort in the face of hardship. Sonny explores the anguish of loss, the allure of addiction, and the quest for purpose in a world full of injustice and misery via his

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.

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.

Jazz music for Sonny meant the exact opposite however, music was more like the light at the end of a tunnel. Jazz music was one of the few positive things in Sonny’s life. Music represented passion and an escape from the world for Sonny. It was where he could do no one harm its where he felt the most free to do as he pleases without being judged. The two brothers were cut from different fabric, and often find it hard to understand one another. Music seemed to be the bridge that managed to fill the gap of understanding between the two, it brought them closer than they have ever been. When the narrator goes to watch his brother perform he learns things he’d never known about his brother before, he then began to appreciate the wonder and terror of becoming a musician.

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.

In the story “Sonny’s Blues” by James Baldwin the narrator of the story is Sonny’s older brother. Throughout the story Sonny’s brother discovers that music is his brother’s way of coping with what life has handed him. In the story Sonny’s older brother feels charged with the responsibility of looking after his brother, and often feels that the people he hangs around with in the musician community are a bad influence. He wants to protect his brother from making the same mistakes twice and ending up in jail over drugs. Once the narrator takes time to actually talk to Sonny and learn about him he begins to see a new side of Sonny.

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

He realizes that music helps him escape his sufferings tries to tell his brother how passionate he is about playing jazz music and his brother is not taking him seriously. The narrator believes that Sonny should be a classical pianist, but that is not what

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

Sonny uses music to express himself and separate himself from drugs. The brother is able to see how much music means to Sonny and how hard he has been judging Sonny; “Yet, there was no battle now, I heard what he had gone through, and would continue to go through until he came to rest in earth” (Baldwin, 99).This change in the relationship creates a happy ending and brings a warm feeling for the reader, Sonny is finally understood, the narrator finally understands and the promise made to their mother will be able to be

He continues his journey to become a jazz musician despite of all the negativity around him. This is another point where we see Sonny getting closer to self-actualization. Maslow claims, “You cannot choose wisely for a life unless you dare to listen to yourself, yourself, at each moment in life, and to say calmly, ‘No, I don’t like such and such’” (113). One must listen to their inner voices in order to be self-actualized. The opinion of others do matter, but not to a point where one loses his own ability to establish his own identity. When the narrator tries to approach Sonny into being something other than a musician, Sonny replies, “But I don’t seem to be able to make you understand is that it’s the only thing I want to do” (262). Even though Sonny’s brother wants the best for him, he doesn’t realize that he is too controlling and he should let Sonny do what he intends to do.

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.

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.

The underlining main point in this story is hope. There are many factors that challenge the life of these characters in this story, but for me, in much aspect this story was reality. The turning point of this story is when Sonny invites his brother to the nightclub in downtown Harlem. Although Sonny’s brother was hesitant he knew it was needed, if he ever desired to have a strong relationship with his brother. Sonny’s brother says “Yet it was clear that, for them, I was only Sonny’s brother. Here I was in Sonny’s world. Or rather: his kingdom. Here, it was not even a question that his veins bore royal blood” (Baldwin). For once the narrator was able to see that his brother was a changed person, and that he did honestly love music. My comparison to this moment would have to be the moment that I took my mom out to eat last Mothers day.