The anonymous storyteller of the story finds from a daily paper that his more youthful sibling, Sonny, has been captured for offering and utilizing heroin. The storyteller recalls Sonny as a young man as he teaches his students and recalls that his students, could one way or another end up like Sonny, given the impediments and hardships they confront in Harlem. Toward the end of the school day, the storyteller heads home, however he sees that one of Sonny’s old companions, who is in every case high and grimy, is sitting tight for him by the school. The two men walk together, discussing Sonny. The storyteller at the same time abhors and feels sorry for Sonny’s companion, who, regardless of his issues, makes it horrendously obvious to the storyteller exactly how troublesome Sonny’s medication dependent life has been.
Time passes, however the storyteller never keeps in touch with Sonny in jail until the storyteller’s young little girl, Grace, is deceased. The storyteller is kept in Harlem and is caught inside himself, unfit to express his feelings or satisfy his commitments as a sibling until the point that his daughters passing gives him the inspiration he needs to change. Sonny composes a long letter back to his sibling in which he endeavors to clarify how he wound up where he is. The two siblings at that point remain in steady correspondence. At the point when Sonny escapes imprison, the storyteller is there for him. “Yet, when he smiled, when we shook hands, the baby brother I’d never known looked out from the depths of his private life, like an animal waiting to be coaxed into the light.” The narrator, admits that he never really knew his child sibling, despite the fact that he can see hints of him covered underneath the haziness of jail life and medication compulsion. It’s a difficult acknowledgment, one that he is compelled to stand up to now that Sonny has progressed toward becoming, somewhat, his obligation. Another reason the narrator took in his brother was because of the promise he made his mother. His mother told him that when his father was younger, he watched his own brother get ran over by a car full of white men who never bothered to stop.
While living with his sister-in-law, Sonny begins playing hooky in school and confesses to investing all his energy in Greenwich Village, hanging out with artists. The two battled, and Sonny acknowledged that he felt like a burden to the family. A couple days later Sonny joined the naval force. The narrator didn’t know whether Sonny was in any condition until the point when he got a postcard from Greece. After the war, the two siblings came back to New York, yet they didn’t see each other for a long while. When they in the end met, they quarreled over Sonny’s choices throughout everyday life.Light and darkness are in steady strain all through ‘Sonny’s Blues,’ and Baldwin utilizes them to feature the glow, expectation, anguish, and gloom that check his characters’ lives. After one particularly troublesome battle, Sonny told his sibling that he could think of him as dead starting there on. The storyteller left, disclosing to himself that one day Sonny would require his assistance. The flashback closes there. Subsequent to having Sonny live with him for half a month, the storyteller discusses whether he should look through Sonny’s room. As he paces forward and backward, he sees a road corner restoration happening outside his window and contemplates its importance.
In the long run Sonny returns home and welcomes his sibling to watch him perform later that night. The two siblings go to a little jazz club where everybody knows and regards Sonny. Sonny and the band get in front of an audience and play, and as they play, the storyteller watches Sonny battle with the music. The narrator portrays a glass sitting over Sonny’s piano as shaking ‘like the plain measure of trembling’ to feature what a troublesome and convoluted position Sonny is in. This picture is acquired from the Bible, where the measure of trembling is utilized as an image to portray the agony and dread that have tormented the general population. The scriptural entry guarantees a help from that misery, yet Baldwin’s utilization of the measure of trembling as an image is less plain. Sonny’s drinking from the measure of trembling fills in as an indication of all the misery he has continued, while likewise offering the shot for recovery and peace.He observes all his sibling’s battles come spilling out as he plays, and at exactly that point does he at last acknowledge sonny’s identity and what he’s made of.
