Theme for Sonny's Blues

Musical Mold

There are many things we learn of Sonny and his nameless brother in Sonny's Blues. We learn they're mannerisms, hobbies, occupations, and even their addictions. It seems we learn nearly everything about the pair; minus the narrators name, as previously stated. Hearing of their histories and the pains they've under gone, we see how they deal with their pain, which often truly tells character. Sonny's Blues isn't a story of two brothers living in a rough city; one of whom is a talented musician. The story is so much more, it's the point of tossing the main two stereotypes of African-Americans in an urban environment. The brothers cope with their own suffering and the suffering around them in two very different, but not uncommon ways.

The story is told through the eyes of Sonny's older brother, who's name we never disclose. What we do know is the narrators currently a algebra teacher, married with kids, and some of his history that gives us insight to the mans personality. As a young man he lost both parents, first his father the later his mother. After high school he went into the military. While in the service he had a rocky relation ship with his brother, Sonny. With the information presented to us through the story, it shows the narrator had a difficult child hood, but he rose above it and kept on the straight and narrow. He's got family, a career, and some stability which is much more than most have in the ghetto's of Harlem. The narrator serves us an image of himself as an orderly man with a ground perspective of things, he's a realist. Which separates him quite drastically from his brother Sonny.

Sonny, the brother, seems to be the main character of the story. It's told through his brother's point of view, but even that seems to revolve around Sonny. Sony seems to be the typical stereotype of a black youth in urban setting. With his dreams and aspirations far from reach and revolving around the typically "wrong type" of crowd, Sonny seems doomed since he said "I want to play jazz"(Baldwin 64). Since speaking those words, Sonny became deeply devoted to his jazz music. It was his mother's death though, that seemed to push Sonny's devotion nearly to obsession. With no one as a parental figure in his life; his parents dead and his brother in the service, it's only natural for one to take solace in something, whether that be the arms of another, sports, work, or some other sort of hobby, such as playing jazz music. Sonny's music wasn't just a hobby: it became a way of life, and a dangerous one at that. In this time period the jazz scene was heavily laden with heroin use. At the time, most jazz musicians were considered "good time people"(Baldwin 64); they were looked down upon and not take seriously; undoubtedly due to the known ties to drugs. Sonny became an addict that peddled heroin while using, then got arrested for doing so. Then he became just another dark face in the clink.

Sonny and the narrator deal with some very difficult issues in their lives but chose to deal with them in there own ways, which shows their character. Sonny turned to drugs to fight the numbing losses and the pain of everyday life. He didn't have anyone to show him the path when he was lost, so he turned to something that could take him away from the journey. What he was going through, had went through, and what was happening around him simply overloaded him. The heroin he used temporarily dulled his pain, but at the same time caused him more.