RR #3 Q2 Sonny's Blues

 In the short story Sonny’s Blues James Baldwin the author talks about a recovering heroin addict piano player named Sonny and his older brother, who during the story tries to understand and connect with his little brother. Although they came from the same place they both lived completely different lives. The story takes place in Harlem during the Vietnam War in 1955. This was around the same time as when heroin and other drugs were being introduced making the streets where they lived into an aggressive environment. Sonny as a young boy in the story was described as being “… wild, but wasn’t crazy. And he’d always been a good boy, he hadn’t ever turned hard or evil or disrespectful, the way kids can, so quick, so quick, especially in Harlem” (Page 2). It wasn’t hard to tell that lived around poverty in a bad neighborhood where a child’s innocence would diminish so quickly causing them to fall in that dark place of life. “And when the light fills the room, the child is filled with darkness. He knows that every time this happens he’s moved just a little closer to that darkness outside. The darkness outside is what the old folks were talking about. It’s what they’ve come from. It’s what they endure. The child knows that they won’t talk anymore because if he knows too much about what’s happened to them, he’ll know too much too soon, about what’s going to happen to him.” This quotes significances shows the darkness in which Sonny would soon fall into. With both parents dead and a brother off to war Sonny is left to live with his brothers wife Isabel and her parents. It is around this time Sonny starts to use heroin. With no one to really listen and understand him he starts to hang out with a group of musicians, who he  thought of as and called family. He starts to draw within himself pulling away from his real family and life itself. He hated Harlem, wanted to get away and the heroin gave him the feeling that he needed. After an argument with Isabel's mother because he wasn't attending school, he runs away and joins the navy to see the world and getaway from Harlem. The story goes deeper into the darkness but I feel these life circumstances is what changes Sonny and starts to affect him dramatically. As for his older brother I feel the death of his daughter Grace changes him. But ironically for the better. It brings him and his Sonny closer together.