Sonny's Blues by James Baldwin

Name:
Instructor:
Course:
Date of submission:
Sonny’s Blues
The first person narration takes place in Harlem in the 1950s. The narrator tells of his younger brother who is entangled by the drugs. The city is influential in the involvement of Sonny into drugs; this is because he turns into drugs in attempts to free himself from the strong feeling of entrapment by the surroundings in the city. The city is occupied by prostitutes and poor people. The thoughts of the narrator who is a teacher are often altered when in class he pictures the young boys and imagine that some of them may be going through the drug smuggling and abuse like his brother. Therefore, the notion that Sonny does not stay of heroin traumatizes him because Sonny despite the fact that he is his brother he is in the world of music where musicians are greatly exposed to drugs, traumatizes him (Bloom, p 149).
The story of sonny’s blues is about two brothers who lost both their parents and the elder brother who is the narrator in the story takes care of his brother. He goes for war and on coming back he comes for his mother’s burial. Isabel is the narrator’s wife and takes care of his younger brother when he is away in the battle field. Sonny is to stay with Isabel’s parents in their house but he is not for the idea.
However, he agrees to stay with Isabel’s parents on learning that there is a piano in the house that he can play anytime provided he goes to school, he agrees. However, after sometime he starts missing school and joins his friends to play jazz music, earlier on he had said to his brother that he wanted to pursue music rather than go to school. With his friends they do music and drugs. Later he drops from school and joins the jazz group. He joins the army in efforts to escape the neighborhood of Harlem and he goes for war (Recker, p 15).
...