The Changes In The Narrators View Of Sonny Essay

Sonny understands this notion and yearns to enlist in the Navy; he was ready to lie about his age. He thought, “if I say I’m old enough, they’ll believe me”, this signifies how eager Sonny was to have the understanding and acceptance that his older brother had. After Sonny returned from the Navy, the narrator still imaged him as someone who “carried himself, loose and dreamlike all the time”. He thought that Sonny had lost all prospects of reality and unfortunately his thoughts came out to be true. The narrators’ time spent in the military allowed him to make that judgment, therefore the setting of the military service established such an identity for the narrator, which made him successful in life and allowed him to help others as well. Also Sonny wanted to enlist in the army so it would take him away from the “killing streets” of Harlem and give him the opportunity to get a college education on the GI Bill.

The encounter the narrator has with Sonny’s childhood friend shows that the narrator judges others just off of appearance and knowing little about them:

Sonny wasn't safe, no matter how much his brother had tried to protect him in his own way, by sending him to live with Isabel and her parents. He still got involved with drugs. The big brother syndrome kicks in again one day when Sonny had gone out. "I was trying to remember everything I'd heard about dope addiction and I couldn't help watching Sonny for signs. I wasn't doing it out of malice. I was trying to find out something about my brother. I was dying to hear him tell me he was safe" (54). He was trying to protect his brother, but there was nothing he

Eventually the narrator and invites him to live his family once he is released from prison and Sonny reluctantly agrees to live there until he finishes college. This is a big turning point in the narrator’s character because he had finally began to wonder “ about the life that Sonny had lived” (Baldwin 243) and started making his efforts to take care of his little brother like he once promised his mother.

The narrator finished high school, did a tour in the army, and became an educator, while Sonny dropped out of school, joined the Navy underage, and came back to New York and lived in a furnished room in Greenwich Village.

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.

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

In my opinion the narrator, is a very selfish man, he only cares about his feelings and not those around him. The narrator broke his promise to his mother to take care of Sonny, “Two days later I was married, and then I was gone. And I had a lot of things on my mind and I pretty well forgot my promise to Mama until I got shipped home on a special furlough for her funeral” (Baldwin). The narrator’s mother wanted the boys to be close, because they will only

Mr. Baldwin made the older brother the narrator so the reader would not feel like Sonny was a dangerous man. The older brother seemed to apologize for Sonny while at the same time try to convince himself and the reader that Sonny really was not a bad guy. Sonny is really a hero and yet an anti-hero. He is someone that seems dangerous, lazy and extreme until you get to know him. The problem is that Sonny does not let people know him.

Richard says he has never seen Sonny so upset, but at that time he figures Sonny is just going through some adolescent stage and does not take him seriously (424). These memories establish a definite pattern of the brothers interactions. Richard's recollections indicate that he has made a life-long habit of disregarding Sonny's beliefs and opinions.

The story begins by telling the readers how Sonny’s brother learned of him being in jail from a newspaper article (29), one might automatically infer that their relationship isn’t so good. It makes you wonder how much influence Sonny’s brother had when it came to how his life ended up. At one point in the beginning of the story his brother even asks himself if he had anything to do with it (33), as if to help the readers with the already occurring thought that maybe he could have helped his brother, maybe he could have been there and done more. Later on, he talks about the promise he made to his mother to take care of his brother, to lift him up and not let him fall (42). He had a responsibility to his little brother and he ultimately let him down, he let him fall and wasn’t around to help him back up when he needed it the most.

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.

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

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.

They've been together now to over a year and he felt that Sonny was the one for him. Never in his life would he have thought that, especially in the past when he had other great loves: Sally in 11th grade, Yelina Muñoz in senior year and beginning of college, and then there were those college flings. It honestly was a miracle he made top of his class when he graduated Harvard. He was