Sonny's Blues

“I was scared, scared for Sonny. He became real to me again.” 

The narrator learns that his estranged brother was arrested for heroin use when reading the newspaper one morning. The quote indicates how distant Sonny and the narrator are at the beginning of the story, as Sonny became something abstract and alien to the narrator. It is only through learning of Sonny’s trouble, and subsequently growing fearful for his younger brother, that the narrator can empathize and begin caring for Sonny again.

“All [the students] really knew were two darknesses, the darkness of their lives, which was now closing in on them, and the darkness of the movies, which had blinded them to that other darkness, and in which they now, vindictively, dreamed, at once more together than they were at any other time, and more alone.”

This is the first time the narrator refers to darkness, a motif he returns to again and again. As the narrator looks at his students, he sees their lives as enmeshed in two forms of darkness. The main darkness is that of racism, poverty, and suffering, which threatens to consume them completely in emotional pain and trauma. On the other hand, their lives also revolve around the darkness of movie theaters, which offers them superficial fantasies through which they can attempt to escape the other darkness.

“You don’t know how much I needed to hear from you. I wanted to write you […] But now I feel like a man who’s been trying to climb up out of some deep, real deep and funky hole and just saw the sun up there, outside.” 

This quote comes from Sonny’s letter to his brother from prison. Though the two brothers are estranged, Sonny reveals that he still cares for his brother and longed to hear from him in prison.