Sonny's Blues

I really liked this story. I thought that it held many different messages and different aspects of life. It told the story of two men, related, but who knew virtually nothing about each other. Two men who met each other truly, for the first time, years after they had known one another. They met each other through music. A music that meant so much more than the tune that it played. It meant life- Sonny's life- and finally allowed his brother to see him and see his struggles. I thought it was interesting how the narrator did not understand Sonny's dream to play music and how he felt that it was below Sonny, when in the end, Sonny's music is what made everything clear to him.
Another part of this story I liked was the fact that the two brothers were separated so far by age. My brother is seven years older than me, which helped me relate to certain points of the story, like how Sonny tried so hard to get him to understand that he had grown up. When Sonny said, "I just wanted to see if I'd have the courage to smoke in front of you," it reminded me of how awkward it is when my brother realizes that I have gone through everything he went through as a kid too. The older brother seems so scared and taken aback by all of Sonny's actions. He says things like "I had never really noticed before" when he finally really sees his younger brother's face and realizes that there is age there, and struggle, and experience. My brother often says to me how weird it is to him that I am in college and that I will be starting my own career and will not always be home like I was when we were kids. I can see the same realization in Sonny's brother when Sonny talks about his dreams and plans for the future.
The part about Sonny and his drug addiction was especially illuminating. He really tried to explain to his brother the reason he did it and how it made him feel. Reading someone's explanation for something like that is very interesting, because it shows how hard it is for people to stop once they become addicted, and how lost people must have felt in order to start a habit like heroin.
The man at the beginning of the story, who came to tell Sonny's brother the news of Sonny, was an important part, despite his small role in the rest of the story. He was showing Sonny's brother that he felt guilt for what happened. He showed Sonny's brother that Sonny was not a bad kid, he was just lost and needed someone to help him. It revealed another person who was just trying to escape. "It might be said, perhaps, that I had escaped, after all, I was a school teacher; or that Sonny had, he hasn't lived in Harlem for years," was a real strong point. It was interesting that the brother considered Sonny's addiction and the fact that he had to be taken away for a while an escape. After all, that was all Sonny was trying to accomplish. He was just trying to escape. But leaving Harlem to get rid of an addiction he would have to fight with for the rest of his life was not really an escape at all. Like the narrator said, "those who got out, always left something of themselves behind." For Sonny, maybe it would be his music and the impression he made on those people who listened to him and treated him like "royal blood."