learn that the narrator is Sonny’s older brother until later, which would change how the reader consumes this opening information.

This narrative method does have the potential to be very aesthetically displeasing for the reader. Readers want to know all details, so attempting to figure out what is happening without all information available can be a very difficult reading experience. A writer will use this to mirror the displeasure the main characters feel.

Beginning in media res allows the reader to immediately be launched into the central conflict of the story: Sonny is in trouble, and his older brother (the narrator) is having a difficult time reconciling the baby brother he's always known with the grown man who has made some poor choices.

This allows the narrator to reflect on his changing relationship with his brother through a series of flashbacks. The reader learns that when Sonny was young, "his face had been bright and open, there was a lot of copper in it; and he'd had wonderfully direct brown eyes and great gentleness and privacy." Quickly, the reader also learns that it has been so long since the narrator has seen his younger brother that he doesn't even know what he looks like now.

Beginning in media res creates tension which drives the tone of the story. Why has the narrator seemingly abandoned his brother? How did Sonny change from a gentle young boy to one riddled with so much conflict that his own brother has cut him out of his life? And why does the reader sense that the narrator carries great guilt about a role he could have played in Sonny's troubles?

These questions are answered bit by bit as the narrator carefully releases the details of Sonny's life. Being thrown right into the conflict allows the reader to continually keep reading and searching for those answers, just as the narrator is searching for answers about both his brother Sonny and about his own role in Sonny's troubles.

"I had kept it outside me for a long time," Baldwin's narrator says in the fourth paragraph of his story, "Sonny's Blues." The news of his brother Sonny's arrest resurrects what the narrator has tried to bury in his heart.  But, with this resurrection in media res there is also the re-emergence of the memory of his daughter, and of his childhood with Sonny, memories which play an integral part in the narrator's later understanding of the darkness of his brother's life.

With first person point of view, Baldwin's story achieves much more clarity to Sonny's condition by the narrator's providing his history as well as his brother's.  For, in the flashbacks the narrator recalls events that fuse the past, present, and future as parallels are drawn between Sonny and their father, between the boys of Harlem then and the boys of Harlem now.  Like a musical piece, these images mingle with others of darkness and of sound.  Sonny and his brother watch a street revival, and likewise feel a revival of brotherly love.  Clearly, this immersion in the middle allows both the past and the future to be brought together in Baldwin's story, thus enabling the narrator to better appreciate the trouble of Sonny's soul, his blues, and realize that what Sonny feels, he feels:  "My trouble made his real.....And his triumph, when he triumphs, is ours."

At the end of the story, the narrator pulls in the reader, as well, with his singleness of theme, saying,

For, while the tale of how we suffer, and how we are delighted, and how we may triumph is never new, it always must be heard.  There isn't any other tale to tell, it's the only light we've got in all this darkness.

The music has helped Sonny express himself and take control and avoid his suffering, just as the blues can help everyone be true--have the glow above their heads--to what they are.

By plunging us straight into the middle of the action, Baldwin is giving us an immediate sense of the importance that the narrator attaches to his relationship with Sonny. As the story begins, the narrator is reading a newspaper story about his brother's arrest for the possession and use of heroin. Straight away, the reader—along with the narrator—wants to know how on earth Sonny got himself into such a terrible mess.

Beginning the action in medias res is a highly effective narrative technique, as it introduces a puzzle that needs to be solved. Most people find the solving of puzzles quite absorbing, and so this is a good way to begin the action. And in the context of a story like "Sonny's Blues," finding out about Sonny is also useful, as it helps us learn a lot about his brother in the process, not least because the two were once so incredibly close.

As Kip Wheeler Ph.D. says, "Usually in medias res is a technique used to heighten dramatic tension or to create a sense of mystery." The technique of in medias res, Latin for in the middle, allows the narrator, whether third or first person, to introduce background events in strategic positions through flashbacks for dramatic or mysterious effect. An example is when the narrator in "Sonny's Blues" flashes back to the boys youthful anger at the inferiority assigned to them by social and cultural constraints and to the escape--the forgetfulness--from their anger that they found in movies. In addition, in medias res allows for a condensed, compressed recounting of extensive background material so that a dramatic kernel of a life-long story can be told with a heightened impact as a short story that has a keen, undiluted impact and focuses on an individual important theme.

In beginning "Sonny's Blues" in the manner he does, Baldwin is able to at once imbibe a sense of how deeply the author is still attached to his brother Sonny.

The author conveys to us that in reading the news article about his brother, this moment will forever color his life—

This would always be at a moment when I was remembering some specific thing Sonny had once said or done.

In other words, the reader learns that the newspaper account is something that Sonny's brother will never be able to escape.

How can one be certain that this moment is so pivotal? The speaker first expresses his fear for Sonny's well-being: "I was scared, scared for Sonny." The speaker describes his responses to the newspaper account: he reads it over and again, distracted from the world around him as he travels to work. He is filled with disbelief. He does not want to accept it but knows he cannot escape the truth before him. He also experiences a tremendous physical response:

A great block of ice got settled in my belly, and kept melting there slowly all day long. . . it was a special kind of ice. It kept melting, sending trickles of ice water all up and down my veins, but it never got less.

Sometimes the melting ice seemed to harden in his gut, as if he would explode. He takes in the news, and it has a devastating effect on him.

However, even more importantly, the reader is able to understand that there has been a chasm between the two; a chasm so enormous, they have become separated not only physically, but also mentally and emotionally, at least on the narrator's part. He notes: "He became real to me again."

A few paragraphs later with regard to the news, the brother notes:

I couldn't believe it: but what I mean by that is that I couldn't find any room for it anywhere inside me. I had kept it outside me for a long time.

Baldwin creates questions in the reader's mind. He conveys to us that out of nowhere, this news article has appeared and shaken the very foundations of Sonny's brother's world.

Baldwin also conveys the intensity that exists for the narrator, even in the midst of their separation. He is fearful for his brother's sake. He is physically sick over it. The reader also has a sense of history between the two brothers—that a great jumbled mess has driven them apart and kept them disconnected.

Perhaps most alarming and most painful is that one can assume the narrator has been somehow able to live comfortably, with their history and his problems tucked away into a safe and hidden spot inside where he has not had to face it—at least until this particular morning.

At the start this short story, Baldwin lays the groundwork for the reader so he or she will not know what to expect. Perhaps in this way, Sonny's story can be told so that one does not automatically rely on the brother's perspective (and his sense of loss) in searching for Sonny's truth. The recounting of the years of difficulty the men have faced allows the reader to more readily comprehend just how complicated their relationship and lives have been, especially for Sonny (in light of his own suffering)—as one compares their very different realities. For there is no simple list of events that could ever hope to explain what motivates Sonny. Similarly, there is no simple explanation of what keeps drawing his brother back to him in an effort to understand Sonny.

With clearer vision of Sonny and his dreams and demons, I would like to believe that the narrator finally realizes the presence of the hope in his heart for Sonny.

The narrator begins the story by speaking about his brother's arrest for heroin use and dealing drugs. The story is presented as a kind of psychological puzzle in which the narrator wonders how his brother, Sonny, wound up the way he did. The narrator goes back in time to piece together what had happened to Sonny on the inside to cause him to be so disaffected. By beginning this way, Baldwin helps the reader experience the narrator's confusion over his brother's fate. As the narrator is himself puzzled, the reader is drawn into the story to find out why Sonny wound up the way he did, in spite of his brother's attempts to help him. The story is presented as a kind of psychological mystery in which the narrator, and, by extension, the reader, wonder why Sonny's fate evolved in the way it did. 

James Baldwin's "Sonny's Blues" begins in a way we call in medias res. This means he begins in the middle of his story. From there, the story goes back and forth in time.  Beginning this way draws the reader in well as we wonder who this person is, what he has read about in the paper, and what will happen next. We want to peer over his shoulder to see the article.  We can visualize this scene.  Even for someone who has never been on a subway, this is drawn fairly vividly, the man's pale face appearing as a reflection in the window as the subway hurtles through its underground paths.  This beginning passage also foreshadows and sets a certain tone on the part of the narrator. He is not identified in the beginning, nor is he ever identified, except as Sonny's older brother.  The darkness of the tunnels and the narrator's being trapped there are foreshadowing the darkness and trapped conditions of the narrator's people, most particularly his brother Sonny, who bears the darkness and cage of his skin color, the poverty of his people, the darkness of his drug addiction, and the darkness of his music, the blues. 

A good way to consider why authors begin their texts the way they do is to compare and contrast the ending. Let us remember that this excellent story opens with the discovery of the narrator concerning his brother's arrest for drug possession and selling heroin. Key to note, however, is the way that this discovery makes the narrator feel trapped and surrounded by darkness:

I read about it in the paper, in the subway, on my way to work. I read it, and I couldn't believe it, and I read it again. Then perhaps I just stared at it, at the newsprint spelling out his name, spelling out the story. I stared at it in the swinging lights of the subway car, and in the faces and bodies of the people, and in my own face, trapped in the darkness which roared outside.

The story thus begins with the discovery of the narrator's brother's arrest and the way that this piece of information oppresses the narrator and makes him feel trapped. The rest of the story tells us, in a non-chronological form, the gradual journey of the narrator and his brother towards wholeness and unity once again. The reason why the story begins as it does is to show the growth in understanding of the narrator and how he comes to appreciate and learn from his brother and the music that is so important to him. Note his attitude towards Sonny and jazz changes by the end of the story:

Freedom lurked around us and I understood, at last, that he could help us to be free if we would listen, that he would never be free until we did. Yet, there was no battle in his face now, I heard what he had gone through, and would continue to go through until he came to rest in earth.

The narrator has moved from feeling "trapped" at the beginning of the story to being aware of the "freedom" that lies around him and the way that jazz music allows its listeners to grasp that freedom. The way the story begins thus adds a dramatic contrast to the progression and development of the narrator.