sonny's blues
...ther for the rest of his life, because he felt that he could have saved his brother from his death. His mother tells him that he has a brother as well “and the world ain’t changed” (239). This is very significant in this story, because the narrator also feels guilt for how his brother is turned out. We find out that the narrator had promised his mother to look after his brother but he abandons his brother in his time of need. The beginning of “Sonny’s Blues” marks an awakening for the narrator. He is faced with Sonny’s drug addiction problem. His own grief for the loss of his daughter focuses a new perception. “My trouble made his real” (245). Now the narrator tries to truly understand his younger brother and what he wants out of his life. The narrator must finally come to know his baby brother in order to understand the menace that he had almost died trying to escape. He realizes that he must come to terms with a failure, “the fact that had held silence- so long!- when (Sonny) had needed human speech to help him,” in order to find a new relationship with his brother (248). The narrator realizes the truth in his mother’s advice to him before she died. “You got to let him know you’s there,” and in doing so Sonny’s brother allow his silence to be challenged by Sonny’s account of his suffering and by the music that is Sonny’s lifeline (240). Sonny cannot simply accept that he has to do the best he can within the environment that he is provided. He feels that “people ought to do what they want to do, what else are they alive for?” (242). Sonny tells the reader that he is alive to be a musician but him not being able to make it as a musician leads him into heroin addiction. Sonny is not afraid to test the boundaries of his world in order to find a better place in it while his brother tries to keep the world in its place by ignoring it. The brothers come together when they are faced with terrifying experiences of their lives. Sonny finally allows his brother into his world and once again “p...