Sonny's Blues Theme

In the short story “Sonny’s Blues” by James Baldwin, the main idea is: the obligation towards brotherly love. The short story expresses this idea through the use of strong characterization, focusing on Sonny and his older brother, and their life together. This short story is meaningful with several emotional experiences that are heart-breaking and life changing. Taking place in Harlem, the story describes the relationship of two brothers, the narrator and Sonny, and their different and similar ways for coping with the African American struggles of that time.
The narrator of “Sonny’s Blues” provides insight not only into Sonny and their life together, but also into their surroundings. Although the story is titled with Sonny’ name, it is through
“All this was carrying me some place I didn’t want to go. I certainly didn’t want to know how it [heroin] felt. It filled everything, the people, the houses, the music, the dark, quicksilver barmaid, with menace; and this menace was their reality” (52), portraying his subsequent heroin abuse which inevitably led to his incarceration-far from his sense of feeling trapped in his own community, ironically, he is now was literally held captive. He writes back to his brother: “You don't know how much I needed to hear from you. I wanted to write you many a time but I dug how much I must have hurt you and so I didn't write” (53). Showing forgiveness for his brother’s neglect and putting him, before himself. He chooses not to write, because he feels he failed and “hurt” is brother (53). After being released from prison, he struggles to defy the stereotypes by moving away from Harlem and beginning a career as a musician. Here he expresses all of inner frustrations, which offers him a chance at redemption. Truly passionate, “and the face I saw on Sonny I’d never before seen” (65), portraying through the narrator, Sonny’s moment of triumph playing his instrument and that artistic expression that redeems his
The narrator, leading a stable life, with a family and teaching career, in comparison to his brother, leading a life of crime, drug addiction and prison time. Both of which, born and raised in the same Harlem neighborhood, “hell […] ain’t no place safe for kids, nor nobody”(55), referring to their residing neighborhood in their mother’s view. It allows for the readers to imagine the unsafe environment, kids were being raised in. The influence it has on children’s lives, and how easy it is to fall into it. Much in the case of Sonny and his brother, where Sonny fell into that life and his brother persevered for a greater accomplishment. Morally, we should accept who people are, what they become and what they choose to be, more so, if its family. “They all gathered around Sonny and Sonny played. Every now and again one of them seemed to say, amen […] filled the air with life, his life. But that life contained so many others” (65), referring to Sonny’s life being filled to “others”, his family, his loved ones. He “fills the air with life”, portraying our deep his jazz music is, and how everyone understands and grasps the hardships of his