Comparing Sonny's Blues And The Rich Brother

Sonny’s Blues by James Baldwin and The Rich Brother by Tobias Wolff, are two short stories that contain many parallels to one and other. Both stories revolve around two brothers, one more successful than the other. In “The Rich Brother”, two brothers, each living adverse lives, are reunited with one another after incident of homelessness. The older, more wealthy brother, Pete, doesn’t understand his younger, poor, brother’s life. Donald becomes homeless, and Pete offers to come pick him up, and let him live with his family. The poor soul accepts the offer, but on the car ride home, the two brothers experience conflict. They confront each other the poor choices made in life, Pete being abusive as a child towards Donald, and Donald’s lack of
A good heart means more than good money when it comes to judging character. In “The Rich Brother”, Donald had received some money from Pete, his older richer brother, but gave it away to a man who Donald believed needed it more than him. All Donald did was perform a random act of kindness, something Pete should have thought highly of, but instead Pete doesn’t understand. The reason why Pete doesn’t understand is because he lacks kindness, and instead of praising Donald, he kicks him to the curb. Pete just leaves Donald on the side of the road, and drives away, happily. Pete may be rich, and have a “nice” life, but he lacks empathy. When Donald and Pete were kids, Pete would repleatively “try to kill” Donald by “punching his stomach on his stitches”. Pete never admitted to it, but simply replied “I maybe did that twenty-five years ago” (pg. 274). When Pete and Donald were around forty, Pete went sky diving and asked Donald to join him but then grew angry at Donald after he “was appalled by the price”. The rich brother simply could not comprehend how someone couldn’t try new interesting activities like himself. In “Sonny’s Blues”, the narrator, who’s name is unannounced, rarely ever communicated with his younger brother, because he didn’t care. Not even when Sonny was sent to prison did he reply to one of his letters until a great time later. When the narrator finally did reply to him,
The narrator did come through at the end after feeling guilt for abandoning his brother, and Pete did offer Donald a place to stay after finding out he was homeless. Money doesn’t define a person’s self worth, and neither does a better career or better material objects. Just because a family member makes a bad decision, doesn’t make it okay to ignore their relations to the person, family is