The narrator's relationship with his younger brother Sonny definitely changes over the course of their lives. At the beginning of the story, Sonny is in prison, and the narrator learns of this from a newspaper. He remarks that he "was scared" and that Sonny "became real to me again." It seems as though the narrator has tried to not think about his brother and has not had a significant relationship with him for some time.
When the two were younger, the narrator felt more protective over his younger brother. This is especially true after the boys' mother tells the narrator that their father's brother was run over by a bunch of white men in a car, in what was presumably a racially-motivated crime. She makes the narrator promise to look out for Sonny, and he takes that responsibility very seriously for a while. He tells his mom, "'I won't forget. I won't let nothing happen to Sonny.'" However, the narrator gets married, the boys' mother passes away, and the two do not seem to have a very close relationship. We learn that this is in large part due to the narrator's disapproval of Sonny's career ambitions. When he tells the narrator that he wants to be a jazz musician, the narrator begs Sonny to be serious and goads him to remain in school. This conversation reveals a real lack of understanding between the brothers; the narrator just cannot wrap his head around how his brother could be a jazz musician for a living. Sonny then says he wants to go to the army or navy, and the narrator continues to disagree with Sonny's ambitions. It's clear that the narrator wants his brother to live a conventional life that does not suit Sonny's needs or desires.
The two grow apart as Sonny pursues his music, but late in the story, the narrator and Sonny reunite and the narrator goes to see Sonny play jazz. It is only seeing his brother in his own element and engaging with the various emotions and memories Sonny's music stirs up in him (the narrator) that the narrator is finally able to begin to see his brother's true character. The final gesture of the story—the narrator's sending a drink to his brother at the piano, Sonny drinking it and nodding the narrator's way—seems to indicate some sort of mutual appreciation and respect.
Like the other response suggests, the narrator is an established professional who perceives himself as someone who was able to “rise above” the circumstances into which he was born, unlike Sonny.
The narrator is torn about what to do when he finds out Sonny is imprisoned, but the story reveals in flashback how their relationship has always been strained. The narrator thinks his brother is an idealistic dreamer who is incapable of making practical choices. He dismisses Sonny’s love for music, criticizes Sonny’s decision to drop out of school, and nearly blames Sonny for how his life has turned out.
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is because the two brothers have different personalities, but the narrator takes a long time to finally understand Sonny’s nature. After seeing Sonny perform at the end of the story, the narrator realizes how difficult Sonny’s life has been. This makes the narrator finally empathize with Sonny, giving him new clarity about how their strained relationship was only the way it was because of the narrator’s judgment and apathy.
Describe the relationship between Sonny and his brother in "Sonny's Blues"?
To borrow a phrase from our modern society: It's complicated.
The narrator does have his brother's best interests at heart. He wants to see Sonny do well and be happy—and he thinks that he, as the older brother, is more knowledgeable about how to ensure that than Sonny is himself.
The narrator has taken a more traditional path through life. He has become a teacher, gotten married, and had several children. His brother had one dream that he shared with the narrator when he was still a kid: He wanted to become a musician. The narrator had scoffed at Sonny and tried to set him on a trajectory more like his own. As a result, Sonny floundered, trying to follow a heart that was not his own. He was forced to live with his brother's in-laws while his brother served in the military, and was told that his music wasn't appreciated there. Eventually, Sonny turned to drugs, which was what he had foreseen as his future, even when he told his brother that he really wanted to escape Harlem.
The narrator's desire to create a life for Sonny that Sonny never desires creates a friction that drives them apart. However, after the narrator's infant daughter dies, he begins to more fully understand Sonny's pain and reaches out to his brother. When Sonny comes to stay with his family, the narrator says that he is desperate to hear Sonny tell him that he is safe.
With this new attempt to understand his brother, the narrator finally opens himself up to Sonny's talents. He accompanies Sonny to a local nightclub, and Sonny takes the stage to play. When he does, the narrator feels the enormity of Sonny's suffering—and of his own. The music transforms him, and he feels the history all they share. In the end, it is Sonny's music—the very thing the narrator rejected all those years ago—which unites the brothers in a new understanding.
Describe the relationship between Sonny and his brother in "Sonny's Blues"?
As James Baldwin’s short story “Sonny’s Blues” begins, the titular figure’s brother is describing Sonny’s pubescent descent into drug addiction—a phenomenon not uncommon in the narrator’s current environment. The narrator of Baldwin’s story is a teacher whose students, he assumes, find the departures from reality offered by heroin more practical than the algebra to which he subjects them. Sonny was arrested the night before in a drug raid, and what follows is the narrator’s description of their lives together and apart; it also includes his belated realization that Sonny’s road to inner peace laid not in the older brother’s path of professional responsibility, but in the music he played on his piano.
Sonny’s brother had been forced following their parents’ death to become a father figure to the younger boy. Reflecting on Sonny’s nature following news of his arrest, the narrator remembers his brother’s fundamentally kind nature: “I told myself that Sonny was wild, but he wasn’t crazy. And he’d always been a good kid, he hadn’t ever turned hard or evil or disrespectful, the way kids can, so quick, so quick, especially in Harlem.” As “Sonny’s Blues” continues, it becomes very apparent that the two brothers had clashed over which path the younger brother should travel. A part of the narrator’s recollections, however, require his own contemplation of the sorrows to which he, as a law-abiding, educated adult, had been forced to contend with. As the older sibling continues to relate the brothers’ history, he emphasizes his ultimately failed efforts at directing Sonny down the path of maturity and responsibility. As Sonny tries in vain to explain the intrinsic importance of music, the older brother tries equally in vain to keep Sonny focused on the importance of holding a more conventional job:
“Well, Sonny,” I said, gently, “you know people can’t always do exactly what they want to do—”
“No, I don’t know that,” Sonny said, surprising me. I think people ought to do what they want they want to do, what else are they alive for?”
“You’re getting to be a big boy,” I said desperately, “It’s time you started thinking about your future.”
There is a certain universality to this exchange between older sibling/father-figure and younger sibling/child. Many parents in more affluent communities have had the same conversations with their children. The difference in Baldwin’s story is the serious shortage of hope inherent in the environment in which they live. These brothers grew up very poor in Harlem, New York—an environment that bred much societal dysfunction. The option of escaping reality through heroin was often the only path young African Americans could see for themselves, and it was into this abyss that Sonny sank. As “Sonny’s Blue’s” comes to its conclusion, the narrator is finally awakened to the overwhelming importance music, and, especially, the blues, plays in not only Sonny’s life, but also in the lives of others. Making the pilgrimage to the nightclub where Sonny is known, respected, and loved, the narrator finally sees his brother in his natural milieu, and his perspective changes radically. Watching his brother perform alongside the other musicians, the narrator observes, “Sonny’s fingers fueled the air with life, his life. But that life contained so many others.”
Describe the relationship between Sonny and his brother in "Sonny's Blues"?
The relationship between Sonny and his brother is extremely complex, to say the least. Baldwin designs these characters to act as character foils; therefore, accentuating each's character by contrasting it with the other.
Sonny is a free spirit, restless and dreaming, he seems to have wandered through life in search of something he is not sure of. He has battled addiction and isolation. He is the younger brother and desperately wants the narrators approval.
Sonny's older brother is very conservative, unlike Sonny. He does not take chances. He has tried to take care of Sonny as much as he can but in the process has forgotten to support Sonny in what Sonny wants. Due to the untimely death of their father, the narrator takes on the role of authority in Sonny's life.
It is not until the end that the narrator truly "hears" Sonny. When Sonny plays his music, the narrator finally hears his story and it all makes sense because he finally stepped into Sonny's world instead of always waiting for Sonny to step into his.