The blues, then, become themetaphor of the brothers' sharing of their pain as this music embodies their own rage and fears, but gives them meaning through its imposing order:

But the man who creates the music is hearing something else, is dealing with the roar rising from the void and imposing order on it as it hits the air. What is evoked in him, then, is of another order, more terrible because it has no words, and triumphant, too for that same reason. And his triumph, when he triumphs, is ours.

This meaningful experience in the club where Sonny plays his blues marks both the brothers' re-entrances into their culture, as well as an understanding that is marked by their identity within a re-creation of their lives in terms of their membership in a community. Their unity is symbolized in the final scene of James Baldwin's powerful story as the narrator, who sits in the dark corner, feels empathy and communion with Sonny, a communion that is symbolized by the Scotch and milk set upon the piano. As Sonny sips from it and nods at his brother, the narrator perceives it as it "glowed and shook above my brother's head like the very cup of trembling," the symbol of the communion of Sonny's suffering and troubles--his "blues"--now shared by his brother.

Baldwin’s short story “Sonny’s Blues” was first published by the Partisan Review in 1957. It is set in Harlem, and centers on the relationship between two characters⁠—an algebra teacher and his brother, Sonny, who is a jazz musician turned drug dealer.

Baldwin wrote “Sonny’s Blues” to express his grief over the racial inequality in Harlem during the 1950s – in the aftermath of the Great Depression. In the 1920s to the 1930s, Harlem went through what is now called the “Harlem Renaissance”. The Harlem Renaissance was a period of intellectual and artistic flourishing among African-American artists. The effects of the Great Depression, however, cut short this prosperity and plunged Harlem once again into extreme poverty. In “Sonny’s Blues”, Baldwin conveys his despair at his and his people’s inability to escape the vicious fate that befalls most African-Americans. Hence, the narrator of the story feels “trapped in the darkness that roared outside”.

Additionally, Baldwin also wrote “Sonny’s Blues” to explore the importance of jazz music in African-American culture. In the early 1950s, a new type of jazz music called bebop flourished⁠—this was in response to the growing ‘whitewashing’ of old jazz music such as Louis Armstrong’s. In “Sonny’s Blues”, Sonny admires bebop while his brother prefers old jazz⁠—what Sonny calls “old-time down home crap”. Apart from confirming their age gap, this demonstrates their generational difference, with Sonny representing the new order and his brother representing the outdated and old. The two brothers only come to an understanding, in fact, in the last part of the story, when his brother watches Sonny play in a jazz club and is struck with emotion⁠—thus, finally embracing what Sonny is and what he represents.

In "Sonny's Blues," the blues are both Sonny's suffering in life but also the music he plays that transforms the suffering into power, freedom, and hope.

For a long time, Sonny's older brother can't understand him. The older brother has escaped the poverty and despair of Harlem by becoming a respectable school teacher, as well as a husband and father. He turns from Sonny when Sonny uses drugs and ends up in prison. He only returns to Sonny when his own pain grows acute after the death of a young daughter.

It is at the end of the story that Sonny's brother starts to understand and appreciate the importance and power of Sonny's music. He goes to hear him perform in a jazz club. He says of Sonny's music:

It was very beautiful because it wasn't hurried and it was no longer a lament. I seemed to hear with what burning he had made it his, and what burning we had yet to make it ours, how we could cease lamenting.