TRIALS AND TRIBULATIONS “Sonny’s Blues” is about two brothers who grew up in Harlem and the pervading hopelessness involved. They had the same parents, environment, and choices. The story is narrated by the older brother who did not succumb to his surroundings, unlike the younger brother, Sonny, who gave into the temptations of the darkness around him. The focus of the story is on Sonny and the path he takes. Sonny’s older brother grew up, joined the army, and later became an algebra teacher in the heart of Harlem. He started a family and created a good life for himself, despite the hardships that he faced in his neighborhood. The story doesn’t tell us how, but he accomplished his goals, as he seemed satisfied with his life. The older brother rose above his circumstances. Sonny joined the service as well, but fell into the same sad, yet usual fate of an average boy growing up in Harlem. He started hanging out with the wrong crowd and fell into a life of drugs and addiction. Sonny confessed, “I guess I was afraid of something or I was trying to escape from something and you know I have never been strong in the head [smile]” (62). The brother and Sonny were not in contact due to the narrator’s frustration at the way his brother was leading his life. The older brother had suspicions (which he's been ignoring) that Sonny was doing drugs. They are confirmed when he read of Sonny’s arrest in the newspaper. He made no attempt to contact his brother, despite this information. The death of the narrator’s daughter was the catalyst that acted as the tool, that melts his heart. This led him to write to his brother in jail. This was the first step to restoring their broken relationship. Sonny, the protagonist of the story, had quite a few things working against him. He was born in Harlem where there was darkness, evil, and drugs all around him. At family gatherings, the older people sat around talking about everything that had gone wrong, and how tragic their plight in life was. During his childhood, Sonny heard this over and over again. The stage was set for failure. At an early age, he lost his father. Sonny’s first test, he befriended the wrong people in school and tried heroin. He lost his mother shortly afterwards. Before he is even out of high school, he had graduated to using drugs. His brother was seven years older than him and was away in the service. He was more or less orphaned at this point in his life. Sonny was a kid who fell into a drug problem and failed this test in life. New test, new home. He was shipped off to live with his brother’s wife, Isabel, in her family’s home. Isabel parents were willing to help. Sonny was reluctant to live in a their household at first. The one benefit about this was that they owned a piano and Sonny’s love for music could now be satisfied. He threw all his energy into playing that piano to the best of his ability. Trying to play away his sorrow and pain, he used the piano as an escape from reality. “Isabel finally confessed that it wasn’t like living with a person at all, it was like living with a sound” (70). Yet the draw of heroin was still there and no amount of piano playing seemed to get rid of it. Another test was coming. Sonny hadn't been attending school. He started spending his time, the narrator relates, “in Greenwich Village, with musicians and other characters in a white girl’s apartment” (Baldwin, 70). When the mother of the house received a letter from the school notifying her of his absences, she confronted Sonny, which led to an argument revealing that he was basically unwanted in the home. This act of kindness (giving him a place to stay), was really just an obligation towards his brother, not for him. He was orphaned once again. Sonny’s solution? He answered this test by extracting himself from the environment and joining the service like his big brother, but chose the navy as opposed to the army. Nothing is said about this time period. The fourth test. Sonny got out of the service, and he had the GI Bill. Unfortunately instead of going to school, just as a dog will return to it’s vomit, he put himself right back into the same place. He failed this test of life by not making the wise decision of returning to school. Instead going back to Greenwich Village with his musician and druggie friends. What were the odds of him succeeding? The brothers were now both out of the service, but each time they were together, it was a fight. The culmination of this was when the brother visited Sonny in his Greenwich Village apartment, having the argument of arguments. The narrator recalls, “So I got mad and then he got mad, and then I told him that he might just as well be dead as live the way he was living. Then he stood up and told me not to worry about him any more in life, that he was dead as far as I was concerned” (Baldwin, 71). This severs their relationship. The next time the narrator heard about his brother he was reading the paper of Sonny’s arrest for using and selling heroin, landing him in jail. Strike 3 you're out! Sonny’s actions revealed that he was easily swayed by what’s going on around him. He did not think things out. He had a spur of the moment personality. He did what felt good for the present, running from bad news, instead of staying and working them out. He didn't think of long term consequences, and did not plan things out. Sonny told his brother if he went into the service he would use the GI Bill to go to school. He later went into the service and did not use that provision to further himself. It’s mind boggling. It seemed there was a definite lack of self control and a lack of strength of character. Instead of changing his circumstances he let his circumstances change him. He let the hopelessness of others around him and his environment choke the life out of him. Not expecting anything to work out well, he folded like a cheap two dollar suit. He was out before he even started. You can’t get on a merry-go-round if you expect to go somewhere new. Sonny kept making these same choices over and over again. You can’t keep doing the same thing and expect to get a different result. That is the definition of insanity. Wherever your focus is, wherever your eyes are pointed, that is the direction you will go in. He kept looking at what was going on around him but refuses to look past it. His choices kept spiraling him further and further downward. No growth in his personality and no increasing maturity. He was stuck, and he was his own worst enemy. The last scene of the story. He was out of jail. This was the deciding test. What would he do? He went back to the bar, back to the piano, and back to his old friends. He played with the band and the narrator indicated that the struggle and turmoil of his life was being expressed and played out on that piano. Like there was a battle within taking place and being played out on that stage. At one point the narrator states, “There was no battle in his face now” (Baldwin,78). When it was over, Sonny was sweating like he had just ran a marathon. The waitress brought Sonny over a scotch and milk. The narrator refers to the drink on the piano and told us that to him, “It glowed and shook above my brother’s head like the very cup of trembling” (Baldwin 78). The readers are not told which way Sonny went in his life, but I believe that drink was representative of the choice he needed to make; the choice between life and death. The choice between continuing to drink from that cup of fury or choosing to have it removed. In Exodus 3:17 the Lord says, “I will bring you up out of the affliction……unto a land flowing with milk and honey”. Is that why the drink served was milk? Yet there was also scotch in it, was that meant to symbolize that he would never be free? Does this particular drink mean that Sonny’s life shall always be a mixture of death and life? Will he never be free of addiction or the haunt of his past? If I were to take a guess, mine would be no.

Works Cited
Kennedy, X. J., and Dana Gioia. "Sonny's Blues." Literature: An Introduction to Fiction, Poetry, Drama, and Writing. New York: Pearson Longman, 2007. 58-72. Print.