Sonny's Blues

“All [the students] really knew were two darknesses, the darkness of their lives, which was now closing in on them, and the darkness of the movies, which had blinded them to that other darkness, and in which they now, vindictively, dreamed, at once more together than they were at any other time, and more alone.”

This is the first time the narrator refers to darkness, a motif he returns to again and again. As the narrator looks at his students, he sees their lives as enmeshed in two forms of darkness. The main darkness is that of racism, poverty, and suffering, which threatens to consume them completely in emotional pain and trauma. On the other hand, their lives also revolve around the darkness of movie theaters, which offers them superficial fantasies through which they can attempt to escape the other darkness.

“You don’t know how much I needed to hear from you. I wanted to write you […] But now I feel like a man who’s been trying to climb up out of some deep, real deep and funky hole and just saw the sun up there, outside.” 

This quote comes from Sonny’s letter to his brother from prison. Though the two brothers are estranged, Sonny reveals that he still cares for his brother and longed to hear from him in prison. Sonny goes on to tell his brother of the guilt he feels and how he longs to escape his past and repair their relationship.

“This was because I had begun, finally, to wonder about Sonny, about the life that Sonny lived inside. This life, whatever it was, had made him older and thinner and it had deepened the distant stillness in which he had always moved.”

The narrator was previously so hurt by Sonny that he couldn’t think of Sonny as a real person who possessed an interior life. Though Sonny and the narrator are still quite distant from each other when they finally reunite, the narrator lets down his guard enough to let Sonny back into his life, and he is able to empathize with Sonny once again.

“The darkness outside is what the old folks have been talking about. It’s what they’ve come from. It’s what they endure. The child knows they won’t talk any more because if he knows too much about what’s happened to them, he’ll know too much too soon, about what’s going to happen to him.” 

As a child, the narrator remembers attending social gatherings with adults and recognizing a darkness within their faces. For the narrator, this darkness represents the pains of being Black in America and enduring a life of racism and hardship. Though the adults try to avoid revealing too much about this darkness to their children, the narrator is already aware that suffering awaits him.

“Your Daddy never did really get right again. Till the day he died he weren’t sure but that every white man he saw was the man that killed his brother.” 

Daddy is forever traumatized by his brother’s death after being run over by a car full of drunken White men, which reduced his brother to “blood and pulp” (29). The anecdote signifies both the ubiquity of racial violence in American society and the lingering psychological scars that such violence leaves on its sufferers. Daddy was so emotionally wounded by his brother’s sudden death that Mama had to care for him to keep him from succumbing to despair and anger.

“I’d never played the role of the older brother quite so seriously before, had scarcely ever, in fact, asked Sonny a damn thing. I sensed myself in the presence of something I didn’t really know how to handle, didn’t understand.” 

After Mama’s death, the narrator is put in a position of having to look after Sonny, forcing the narrator to understand Sonny in ways that he had never previously needed to. The narrator realizes that Sonny is a growing adult with a worldview that differs from own. Rather than respect his brother’s differences, the narrator feels frightened by what he perceives as Sonny’s strangeness.

“‘Well, Sonny,’ I said gently, ‘you now people can’t always do exactly what they want to do—’

‘No, I don’t know that,’ said Sonny, surprising me. ‘I think people ought to do what they want to do, what else are they alive for?’” 

This exchange, which occurs during an argument between Sonny and the narrator after Mama’s funeral, evinces the how different the brothers’ worldviews are. The narrator has a practical outlook on life, believing that individuals must focus on providing for themselves and their family at the expense of following their every wish. Sonny, in contrast, has a more idealistic perspective, believing that one should always follow their desires, regardless of how unrealistic they are.

“Isabel finally confessed that it wasn’t like living with a person at all, it was like living with sound. […] It was as though [Sonny] were all wrapped up in some cloud, some fire, some vision all his own; and there wasn’t any way to reach him.” 

Following Mama’s death, Sonny becomes completely obsessed with playing the piano, frightening Isabel and her family with his burning passion for jazz. Though Isabel, and by extension the narrator, find Sonny’s obsession strange and concerning, the anecdote shows how Sonny’s jazz emanates from such intense emotion that he seems to play piano less out of want than necessity.

“[Sonny] was a man by then, of course, but I wasn’t willing to see it. He came by the house from time to time, but we fought almost every time we met. I didn’t like the way he carried himself, loose and dreamlike all the time, and I didn’t like his friends, and his music seemed to be merely an excuse for the life he led.” 

Though Sonny and the narrator are both adults, the narrator treats Sonny like an immature little brother and refuses to respect Sonny or his life decisions. The narrator is almost threatened by Sonny, whose “dreamlike” behavior and bohemian lifestyle seems to draw into question the narrator’s own life choices. Ultimately, these differences cause the two brothers to grow further apart, with Sonny treating the narrator like he isn’t family.

“As the singing filled the air the watching, listening faces underwent a change, the eyes focusing on something within; the music seemed to soothe a poison out of them; and time seemed, nearly, to fall away from the sullen, belligerent, battered faces…” 

Both the narrator and Sonny are transfixed by the street performance of a religious group; they are particularly struck by the main woman’s beautiful singing. As the narrator watches, he sees how the music seems to emanate from the suffering that the individuals have endured while also helping the listeners find solace and joy. The scene prefigures the narrator’s later appreciation for how Sonny transmutes his own suffering and emotional pain into jazz.

“‘But nobody just takes [suffering],” Sonny cried, ‘that’s what I’m telling you! Everybody tries not to. You’re just hung up on the way some people try—it’s not your way!’” 

When the brothers argue about Sonny’s past heroin use, the narrator suggests that drug users are seeking to escape their suffering rather than just dealing with it like everyone else. Sonny argues that no one “just takes” their suffering, that everyone seeks an outlet to escape from it. Sonny implies that the narrator is harshly judging drug users for their response to a plight that everyone struggles with.

“Oh well. I can never tell you. I was all by myself at the bottom of something, stinking and sweating and crying and shaking, and I smelled it, you know? my stink, and I thought I’d die if I couldn’t get away from it and yet, all the same, I knew that everything I was doing was just locking me in with it.” 

Sonny describes his struggles with drug use and how his addiction pushed him to a darkness that terrified him. Despite that, Sonny fell even deeper into addiction, hoping drugs would allow him to escape the darkness even as they exacerbated it. Though Sonny attempts to share his pain with his brother, he recognizes that to a certain extent his brother will never fully understand what he has been through, commenting, “I can never tell you.”

“Yet, it was clear that, for them, I was only Sonny’s brother. Here, I was in Sonny’s world. Or, rather: his kingdom. Here, it was not even a question that his veins bore royal blood.” 

The concert at the nightclub is the first time the narrator sees Sonny perform. As the two enter the club, the narrator sees how Sonny is admired by his peers, who view Sonny as near royalty for his jazz-playing abilities. The narrator’s first experience “in Sonny’s world” helps him appreciate and respect Sonny’s music career.