Understand Sonny's Blues
...nd a husband. The brothers grew up in Harlem, New York during the WWII era. Harlem was going through a renaissance . This was the “killing streets of our childhood.” (Baldwin, 46). Our narrator worked hard to avoid being a victim of the streets. “It might be said, perhaps, that I had escaped, after all, I was a school teacher…” (Baldwin, 47). Sonny, however, was different. “Some escaped the trap, most didn’t.” (Baldwin, 47). Sonny didn’t. He struggled in school and discovered heroin. The only thing he seemed to have going for him was his music. One positive event in Sonny’s life was his enlistment in the navy. The navy gives much to its members in exchange for their service. It instills values of honesty, integrity, determination, discipline, honor, courage, morality, and pride in oneself. Yet the navy couldn’t help Sonny. He only had his music. Something his brother did not understand. Sonny wanted to be a musician. Our narrator didn’t understand. “I simply couldn’t see why on earth he’d want to spend his time hanging around nightclubs, clowning around on bandstands, while people…” (Baldwin, 51 -52). Yet he kept an open mind. “You’ll have to be patient with me.” (Baldwin, 52). Our narrator and Sonny go on discussing jazz and whether or not Sonny can make a living out of it. Sonny wants to have his brother understand him; he fails. Our narrator starts to lecture Sonny. He tells Sonny that “people can’t always do exactly what they want to do,” and that he needs to finish school. Sonny is a private person. “It doesn’t do any good to fight with Sonny. Sonny just moves back, inside himself where he can’t be reached.” (Baldwin, 48). And so our narrator must find another way to communicate with Sonny. Sonny finished his enlistment with the navy and came back to Harlem. The navy couldn’t help Sonny with his woes. The navy did, however, make a man of Sonny. “He was a man by then, of course, but I wasn’t willing to see it.” (Baldwin, 56). Our narrator still feels the need to be a father rather than just be there for his brother. It wasn’t until the death of Grace that our narrator saw Sonny and his troubles differently. “My trouble made his real.” (Baldwin, 56). From this point our narrator gradually understands Sonny and his music. Our narrator realizes that Sonny has his own beat. “…he’s imposed on this his own half-beat. I had never really noticed it before.” (Baldwin, 57). The brothers share a beer. This is a significant development. A father does not share a beer with his son until his son is a man. Our narrator now sees Sonny as a man and they have a man to man talk. He felt as his brother was truly there for him and would take him seriously. He opened up and showed a side no one had seen before. “‘Sometimes, you know, and it was actually when I was out of the world, I felt that I was in it… And other times—well, I needed a fix, I needed to find a place to lean, I needed a clear space to listen—and I couldn’t find it, and I—went crazy, I did terrible things to me, I was terrible for me… I was all by myself at the bottom of something, stinking and sweating and crying and shaking, and I smelled it…’” (Baldwin 60). Our narrator should have been there for Sonny and been his anchor. Sonny admits that he ran away from Harlem to get away from the drugs. ...