Music is a powerful language which speaks to us, move us, and fills us with emotions. In “Sonny’s Blues”, the voice of jazz reflects the relationship between two brothers. The unnamed narrator who represents one of the one of the sides of the African American experience. Sonny the titular character of the story, Sonny represents the other side of the African American experience. In “Sonny’s Blues” we find an important description of how a musician can express his feeling through his music.
The story begins as an unnamed algebra teacher reads something disturbing while riding to school. The teacher’s fear and anxiety about his brother Sonny, who has been arrested for selling heroin reminds him of his students, who may already be experimenting with drugs like heroin. Both brothers grew up in Harlem, a neighborhood full with poverty and desolation.
He had been picked up, the evening before, in a raid on an apartment …show more content…
And then hell just start working his way back in again. You mean hell never kick the habit. Is that what you mean? (Baldwin)
The narrator struggles with the idea that Sonny may never kick his drug addiction, and he will never find his way out of it. We can clearly see that if Sonny never gets off drugs, the narrator will never get his brother back. However, Sonny`s passion about music will help him leave aside his addiction of drugs.
“When she was singing before,” said Sonny, abruptly, “her voice reminded me for a minute of what heroin feels like sometimes- when it`s on your veins. It makes you feel sort of warm and cool at the same time. (Baldwin)
Sonny is trying so hard to explain to the narrator what it feels to be high on heroin. It makes sense that he would compare up to music, the thing he knows the best. Having to grow up in an environment in which Sunny has no control over anything, and I believe that`s why he makes the decision to do drugs, and his also gains a momentary sense that he`s controlling his own
The story begins as an unnamed algebra teacher reads something disturbing while riding to school. The teacher’s fear and anxiety about his brother Sonny, who has been arrested for selling heroin reminds him of his students, who may already be experimenting with drugs like heroin. Both brothers grew up in Harlem, a neighborhood full with poverty and desolation.
He had been picked up, the evening before, in a raid on an apartment …show more content…
And then hell just start working his way back in again. You mean hell never kick the habit. Is that what you mean? (Baldwin)
The narrator struggles with the idea that Sonny may never kick his drug addiction, and he will never find his way out of it. We can clearly see that if Sonny never gets off drugs, the narrator will never get his brother back. However, Sonny`s passion about music will help him leave aside his addiction of drugs.
“When she was singing before,” said Sonny, abruptly, “her voice reminded me for a minute of what heroin feels like sometimes- when it`s on your veins. It makes you feel sort of warm and cool at the same time. (Baldwin)
Sonny is trying so hard to explain to the narrator what it feels to be high on heroin. It makes sense that he would compare up to music, the thing he knows the best. Having to grow up in an environment in which Sunny has no control over anything, and I believe that`s why he makes the decision to do drugs, and his also gains a momentary sense that he`s controlling his own