Sonny's Blues: Freedom, Acceptance, And Redemption

The story Sonny's Blues is about overcoming suffering and pain. The themes of the story are freedom, acceptance, and redemption. At the beginning of the story, the narrator seems to be out of touch with himself and disconnected from his community. When his daughter dies, he gradually begins to comprehend the depth of his brother Sonny’s struggle with drugs addiction. He later reconnects with his brother to rekindle their relationship. At first, he is hesitant to accept his brothers' desire to be a musician. After hearing Sonny play, the narrator accepts the meaning of his brothers' life. By accepting his brother, he is able to come to terms with himself and his community. This breakthrough led to redemption for the narrator and his brother

Sonny. Both characters were lost and then found redemption through acceptance.
“But the houses looked exactly like the houses of our past, yet dominated the landscape, boys exactly like the boys we once had been found themselves smothering in these houses, came down into the streets for light and air and found themselves encircled by disaster.

Some escaped the trap, most didn’t. Those who got out always left something behind, as some animals amputate a leg and leave it in the trap. It might be said, perhaps, that I had escaped, after all, I was a school teacher; or that Sonny had, he hadn’t lived in Harlem for years. Yet as the cab moved uptown through the streets which seemed, with a rush, to darken with dark people, and as I covertly studied Sonny’s face, it came to me that what we were both seeking through our separate cab windows was that art of ourselves which had been left behind. It’s always at the hour of trouble and confrontation that the missing member aches” (Baldwin 104). This excerpt from the story really reflects the narrator's disconnect from

himself and his community. He seems to feel as though the community he grew up in took a piece of his brother and himself. When he visits Harlem, he observes the same generational struggles that afflicted him and his brother growing up. To some extent, he believes he escaped his humble beginning as he went on to become a school teacher. Yet he still felt disconnected from himself and his community. His brother Sonny had tried to move away from Harlem to stop doing drugs. Throughout the story, both characters try to find freedom from in their own ways. For the narrator, it was freedom from the trap of his environment and the freedom to accept his brother. For Sonny, it was freedom from his environment, freedom from jail, freedom from drug addiction and the freedom to live his purpose as a musician and be accepted by his brother.
At first, the narrator had a hard time accepting the fact that his brother Sonny was dedicating his life to becoming a musician.

“He turned back to me and half leaned, half sat, on the kitchen table. “Everything takes time,” he said, “and – well, yes, sure, I can make a living at it. But what I don’t seem to be able to make you understand is that it’s the only thing I want to do” (Baldwin 110). In the beginning of the story, the narrator reads a news story about his brother Sonny being arrested from a drug bust. When Sonny is released from jail he decides he wants to become a blues musician. The narrator moves Sonny in with to his family’s home while he is away in the army and Sonny’s constant piano playing annoys the household. The narrator and his family soon come to terms with the fact that music gives Sonny a life purpose and a meaning to live. “At the same time, he wasn’t really a man yet, he was still a child, and they had to watch out for him in all kinds of ways. They certainly wouldn't throw him out. Neither did they dare to make a great scene about the piano because even they dimly sensed, as I sensed, from so many thousands of miles away that Sonny was at that piano playing for his life. (Baldwin 112). It At this moment, the narrator begins to accept his brother, who had rejected for so long. He starts to accept the fact that his brother Sonny finds his purpose through

music.
The narrator’s daughter suddenly dies of polio while he is away, and for the first time, he is able to comprehend his brothers suffering. “I think I may have written Sonny the very day that little Grace was buried. I was sitting in my living room in the dark, by myself, and I suddenly thought of Sonny. My trouble made his real” (Baldwin 113). When the narrator says “My trouble mad his real” he is confirming that he is finally able to relate to his brother's pain and suffering. Before his daughter died, it seemed as though he was disconnected from his brother and judgmental of him to some extent. Through the loss of his daughter, the narrator experiences and pain and suffering and is then able to empathize with the pain and suffering that his brother experiences through drug addiction. To some extent, being able to empathize with his brother allows him to accept him for who he is.
Toward the end of the story, the narrator goes with his brother Sonny to the jazz club in Greenwich village to see Sonny play with his band. The narrator takes note of how when he is there Sonny seems to be free and accepted by the band members and the crowd. It’s as if this place gives Sonny an identity and a purpose. “And it turned out that everyone at the bar knew Sonny or almost everyone; some were musicians, working there, or nearby, or not working, some were simply hangers-on, and some were there to hear Sonny play. I was introduced to all of them and they were all very polite to be. Yet, it was clear that, for them, I was only Sonny's brother. Here, I was in Sonny’s world. Or, rather: his kingdom. Here, it was not even a question that his veins bore royal blood” (Baldwin 119). When the narrator goes to the jazz club with his brother, he realizes that there he is in Sonny’s place of belonging. Throughout the story, it seems as though Sonny is simply a character and though in the narrator's world. Here, the tables turn and we see the narrator take the passenger seat to Sonny's world. When the narrator hears his brother play, he is deeply moved. He is able to feel his brother pain translate trough the music, and finally, he accepts him. Hearing his brother play allowed him to redeem himself, free himself and accept himself and his brother. This was also a moment of redemption, freedom, and acceptance for his brother as well. “I seemed to hear with what burning he had made it his, with that burning we had yet to make it ours, how we had yet to make it ours, how we would cease lamenting. Freedom lurked around us and I understood, at last, that he could help us be free if we would listen, that he would never be free until we did. I had heard what he had gone through and would continue to go through until he came to rest in earth” (Baldwin 121). The narrator is so moved by his brother music that he is able to understand his brother for the first time. His brother music makes him revisit memories of his mother and the painful story she told him about how his father's brother died at the hands of racism. He even says that he saw his little girl again and felt his wife's tears, then his own. Sonny’s music allows the narrator to restore his memories of his community and his family. “The narrator is well aware, for example, that his profound response to the blues is a matter of “only a moment, that the world waited outside, as hungry as a tiger” – a great cat ready to destroy the birdlike whistling – “and that trouble stretches above us, longer than the sky”. The final point of the story is that the narrator, through his own suffering and the example of Sonny, is at last able to find himself in the brotherhood of man” (Complicated And Simple 357).
The narrator senses the struggle between life and death translated in Sonny’s music. Instead of trying to save his brother, he finally realizes that only music can save him. “When Sonny makes the music his own it becomes a gift. In it “that life contained so many others.” Sonny reached a point of breakthrough and he is giving his life back in music” ( McParland 138). At the very end of the story, the narrator describes the glass of scotch and milk that Sonny drinks from as the “very cup of trembling” (Baldwin 121). When Sonny drinks from this glass, he looks at his brother and nods before starting to play again. This is significant as it represents an emblem of initiation into freedom, acceptance, redemption for both of them.