In the nightclub, the narrator has several epiphanies about his brother and their relationship by watching him play.
The first epiphany is that music is Sonny's voice in the world. He has the following revelation:
Creole wasn't trying any longer to get Sonny back in the water. He was wishing him Godspeed. Then he stepped back, very slowly, filling the air with the immense suggestion that Sonny speak for himself.
The narrator has never done this. When Sonny tells him in their younger days that he wants to pursue music, his brother shuts down the idea quickly. Sonny thus wanders through life with no real sense of purpose, and in this moment, the narrator realizes that Sonny should be allowed to use his own voice.
The narrator also has an epiphany that Sonny's music provides a vehicle to link them to all of their shared joy and pain:
I saw...
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the moonlit road where my father's brother died. And it brought something else back to me, and carried me past it, I saw my little girl again and felt Isabel's tears again, and I felt my own tears begin to rise.
The way that Sonny can play the blues shows not simply great talent but the ability to connect with his audience, moving them to feel the music. When he opens himself up to really hearing Sonny's music, the narrator is transported through this pain they share and emerges on the other side.
The epiphanies of the narrator center on the journey of his brother and of their relationship, showing that the narrator, too, holds some of the fault in the struggles his brother has endured over the years because of the lack of support that he has provided Sonny.
The narrator of "Sonny's Blues" by James Baldwin finally talks with the brother from whom he has been alienated. Years ago Sonny would come by his house, but the narrator perceived him as "loose and dreamlike all the time" and he disliked his friends. But, now as adults, the narrator realizes that he should listen to Sonny, for Sonny is "doing his best to talk." And, as Sonny speaks of his addiction to heroin, his attempt to keep from suffering, the narrator realizes that there stood
the fact that I had held silence...when he had needed human speech to help him.
The narrator's epiphany in the living room is that beyond the "power of time and forgiveness" is the power of listening, a power that could have helped Sonny.
Later, at the nightclub, the narrator listens as Sonny plays the blues and jazz. He enters Sonny's world, his "kingdom. Here, it was not even a question that his veins bore royal blood." The narrator now respects his brother Sonny, perceiving what a great artist he is. He confronts another moral truth:
...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.
The narrator does experience two epiphanies. However, they both come from his realization that he must listen to his talented brother who needs his ear in both situations. "Meaning depends upon sharing," writes Joseph Conrad in a short story. Certainly, meaning for both Sonny and his brother greatly depends upon their sharing of their inmost souls with one another, for then they can understand each another.