The Themes Of Suffering In Sonny's Blues

Baldwin says the hardship persisted as”dimness" and the "light" he discusses is when individuals even for a short period of time escape the darkness. Baldwin discusses how the hardship is found at a very young age, when he says from the eyes of the storyteller, a science instructor in Brooklyn, New York, "All they truly knew were two types darkness’s, the darkness of their lives, which was presently surrounding them, and the darkness of the films, which had made them blind to other darkness."

As the teacher's students reached, they understand how constrained their opportunities in life will be. The narrator is saddened by the fact that a significant number of them may be using drugs, like Sonny did, and that maybe the drugs would do "more for them than math could." The darkness of the motion pictures shows that the movies had drawn the young men's attention far from their own particular lives. …show more content…
From the demise of the narrator's little girl to Sonny's addiction to drugs to the homicide of the narrators’ uncle, suffering has constantly dominated the story. Suffering is, according to Sonny, inescapable. Suffering is symbolized as darkness, which infringes upon the lives of the narrator's family and society, something which has to be endured and borne. Sonny justifies that his use of drugs is a way to adapt to suffering which would otherwise make him