"Child" in Sonny's Blues

The words "child" or "kids"are not used as much as the word "boys" in this story. Every time the word "boys" is used, it seems to be describing something cynical. The narrator compared Sonny to the boys in his classes or to boys he saw in the story. Every time he did this, it was like he was realizing that these boys were going through everything that he went through at that age and everything Sonny was going through. The narrator was thinking of Sonny and how he thought "he hadn't ever turned hard or evil or disrespectful, the way kids can go, so quick (17)." Every image of the boys in this story were ones of troubled boys who had no future and were filled with rage. Even when the narrator heard the boys in his school laughing, he heard it as "mocking and insular" laughing, instead of "joyous(18)."
He said that "these boys, now, were living as we'd been living then, they were growing up with a rush and their heads bumped abruptly against the low ceiling of their actual possibilities (18)." This shows what little expectations people have for the kids growing up in Harlem, and how, sadly, they are very true. Sonny's mother said "It ain't only the the bad ones, nor yet the dumb ones that gets sucked under (24)." The kids at the playground were "most popular with the children who don't play jacks, or skip rope, or roller skate, or swing, and they can be found in it after dark (22)."
This image of children in this story says a lot about the setting, which is Harlem, where these kids do not know a good life, and do not have much of a chance for a good future. It defines the mood- very dark and sad and cynical. As for plot, these kids are a reflection of what Sonny became, so it has a lot to do with the plot and how common Sonny's character is in this kind of life.