Sonny's Blues

Sonny's Blues

By James Baldwin

The first thing about this story that I notice right away is that it is written in the first-person narrator. The story starts with the narrator talking about his younger brother Sonny, who was in a heroin bust; to me this was the main point that set up the whole story. The reason I think this was the main point of the story is because right away I knew that his younger brother was a troubled child throughout his years. I thought the story was very interesting on how the author portraits Sonny's older brother. In one of the paragraphs when he is talking to his mother, and she is very concerned of what will happen to Sonny when she dies. She asks Sonny's older brother to make sure nothing happens to Sonny. Sonny's older brother promises her he will make sure of it. I think that the reason the author wrote this conversation with the older brother and the mother is to show how much Sonny is loved and to also show that his mother somehow knows that Sonny is going the wrong path. I loved the setting of the story and I can relate to it, because I had a friend who had drug problems and got in trouble and was taken to rehabilitation places to help him out and he really struggle to overcome the addiction. Towards the end of the story Sonny's older brother says "freedom lurked around us and I understood, at last, that he could help us to be free if we listen, that he would never be free until we did." To me the way I understood that is that Sonny has been lost for a while and even though he is still afraid that he could relapse, he has the support of his older brother and Creole as well other people around him. The reason I think that is because when my friend was in rehab programs and he lost friends because of his drug abuse, he had no support at one point, there was only a few people that actually made him realize that he had people willing to help him out so he could get better. After he got out, I got him involved in sports, track and wrestling. He found something that he was very talented at and that was wrestling, it gave him something to do and feel good of what he could do and how we were proud of him. At the end of the story his while Sonny's older brother is watching him performed and waited for them to finish, he asked the waitress to take drinks to the bandstand. Sonny did not seem to notice the drink that the waitress put on top of his piano, but as soon as they started playing again Sonny graved it and looked at his older brother and nodded. To me that point in the story means by his brother getting him that drink was kind of a massage that Sonny's brother wanted to send him. The massage that he was sending him was that he will be there for him (Sonny) to help and support him with this new freedom he has found.