The plot in “Sonny’s Blues” emphasizes the importance of the bond between two brothers through the power of music and god. “Sonny’s Blues” displays the daily struggle of societal issues, status, and achievements the two brothers faced in reality. Sonny's brother struggles to understand Sonny and his compassion for music. Music builds this communication that the narrator lacks with his brother but they overcome these struggles through music. The narrator is struggling to bond with his distant brother as a biblical vibe is looking over the narrator and helping him through his life.
Music plays a significant role in the brother’s lives as it changes their view of each other. Sonny’s dream of becoming a jazz musician is shunned upon his brother but he doesn’t quit his dream. His brother worried that pursuing a music career won’t help him financially and can’t become …show more content…
Baldwin uses religious references in the story to talk about the narrator and Sonny’s life. After Sonny's performance, the narrator salutes Sonny by giving him a drink, sitting on top Sonny's piano, it glows above Sonny's head and the narrator says it's “like the very cup of trembling” (Baldwin 585). According to the Biblical Foundation of James Baldwin’s “Sonny’s Blues”, it compares “Sonny’s Blues” to the parable of the Prodigal Son which is a tale of sin and redemption. In both stories, the lost son ultimately returns to the family trio and are saved. In “Sonny’s Blues,” Sonny's safe return home and the reconciliation between him and his brother is the death of the narrator's daughter, Grace, from polio. Grace came home from school and she fell down in the living room but she didn’t scream and she couldn’t breathe. Grace's fall reminds the narrator of both Sonny's fall and his own fall from grace for ignoring the promise that he made to his mother to not let Sonny