Sonny’s Blues Summary & Analysis

The story opens on the narrator (unnamed) who has read in the newspaper that his brother Sonny was picked up by the police the previous night for using and selling heroin. The narrator describes spending the rest of his day reeling from the news, feeling like he has ice water in his veins.

The narrator confesses that this news isn’t entirely a surprise to him. He’d had suspicions about Sonny but hadn’t wanted to believe them—he hadn’t ever wanted to see his brother meet the same fate as so many other men in Harlem. In the narrative present, the narrator is teaching a high school algebra class, and he reflects that many of the young men in the classroom are likely using drugs, too, because drugs bring relief from the rage they feel at knowing how few possibilities they have in their lives.

After the last bell of the school day, the narrator heads home to tell Isabel, his wife, the news. In the courtyard of the school, he sees someone he mistakes for Sonny—but it’s actually a childhood friend of Sonny’s that the narrator dislikes because he’s always high and asking for money, although the narrator says that he always gives the man money when asked. Seeing him that day, the narrator realizes that he suddenly despises this man.

The narrator and Sonny’s childhood friend walk together to the subway. They talk about what happened to Sonny, and the narrator reveals that he’s not planning to do anything to help him because he doesn’t see any way that he could be helpful. The man admits that he wonders if he might be partially responsible for Sonny’s downfall, since he once told Sonny how good heroin felt. As the narrator is hearing this, he looks around the street and is filled with dread and hopelessness, seeing menace in “the people, the houses, the music” and everything else around him. He asks what will happen to Sonny, and the man says that he’ll go to jail, they’ll let him out, and then “it’ll all just start all over again,” since Sonny is an addict.

The narrator wants to ask Sonny’s friend more questions, but knows he couldn’t bear the answers. The man tells the narrator that this is going to be hard on Sonny, but the narrator doesn’t react. At the subway station, the man asks for a dollar and the narrator, realizing he doesn’t hate the man anymore, gives him five. The man tells the narrator not to worry about Sonny, that maybe he would write to him, but the narrator makes no similar promise.

The narrative jumps ahead to a few months later, when the narrator’s young daughter Grace has just died. The narrator says that it wasn’t until this happened that he finally wrote to Sonny, and Sonny wrote him back a letter that “made [him] feel like a bastard.” In the letter, Sonny admits how much he needed to hear from the narrator, but says that he didn’t write first because he knew he had caused so much pain. Sonny is ashamed of himself—he says he’s glad their parents (implying that Sonny and the narrator are brothers) aren’t alive to see him like this—and he’s scared about his future, worried that he will relapse once he’s out of jail. Sonny is clearly suffering tremendously, and he takes pains to tell the narrator that he shouldn’t think that the trouble Sonny is in has anything to do with being a musician, though he can’t say exactly what the source of his trouble is.

The brothers continue to write during Sonny’s time in jail, and the narrator picks Sonny up once he’s released. The narrator describes that, on seeing Sonny for the first time, long-forgotten memories return to him because “I had begun, finally, to wonder about Sonny, about the life that Sonny lived inside.” Sonny looks haggard, but the narrator sees traces of his baby brother in Sonny’s face.

Sonny and the narrator take a taxi to the narrator’s house, driving through wealthier Manhattan neighborhoods and then into the “killing streets” of Harlem, where they both grew up and where the narrator now lives. The narrator observes the newly-built housing projects jutting up out of the streets “like rocks in the middle of a boiling sea,” and he describes young boys, exactly like they had been, growing up feeling smothered in their houses, then coming “into the streets for light and air and [finding] themselves encircled by disaster.” He notes that while he and Sonny can both be said to have escaped Harlem (the narrator by becoming a schoolteacher, and Sonny by not having lived in Harlem for years), a part of each of them is still on those cruel streets.

The narrator then reveals that he lives in one of the menacing housing projects he described. He notes that his sons, growing up there, will face the same danger and suffering that he and Sonny faced as children, and he says that bringing Sonny to his home feels like putting him back in the situation that he’d “almost died trying to escape.”

Despite this, Sonny’s first night living with the narrator’s family is successful—the narrator’s two sons like him, and Isabel seems glad to have him there. The narrator, though, seems on edge, looking for clues that Sonny might be using heroin again and hoping he isn’t.

The narrator begins to remember his father, whom he describes as “always on the lookout for ‘something a little better.’” The narrator says this was even true on the weekends when his father got drunk, but that his father died on one of those drunken weekends before he could find the better life he was looking for. The narrator explains that Sonny and his father never got along because they were too much alike.

The narrator digresses to recall the experience of children in Harlem listening to their parents speak about “the darkness outside,” which refers to all that they’ve had to endure. He speaks of the comfort and terror that this brings children—the comfort of knowing that the adults stand between them and the darkness outside, and the terror of knowing that the adults won’t always protect them, so the children will one day have these same adult experiences of suffering.

The time period of the story then jumps backward, with the narrator recalling the last time he saw his mother alive. This was when he came home from the army for his father’s funeral, and his mother made him promise he would look after Sonny if anything happened to her. The narrator doesn’t understand her worry, so she explains that her husband, the narrator’s father, once had a brother who died. The narrator has never heard of this brother before.

The narrator’s mother recalls that the brother used to play guitar and sing at different places. One Saturday night he and the narrator’s father were drunk and walking home when a group of drunk white men aimed their car at the brother and ran him over in the street. The narrator’s mother explains that this changed her husband irrevocably—that it made him crazy, bitter, and suspicious of whites. She tells the narrator that she’s telling him this story now because he’s got a brother, too, and “the world ain’t changed.” The narrator promises not to let anything happen to Sonny, and his mother adds that even though he might not be able to stop something from happening to Sonny, he must always let Sonny know he’s there for him.

Then, after his mother dies, the narrator gets a furlough from the army to attend her funeral. Remembering his promise, he talks with teenaged Sonny about his future, and Sonny says he wants to be a jazz pianist. Horrified that this isn’t a respectable or financially secure occupation, the narrator argues with Sonny, and Sonny insists that he doesn’t care what his brother thinks. The narrator tells him that people shouldn’t always do exactly what they want to do, and Sonny responds that, “I think people ought to do what they want to do, what else are they alive for?”

Since the narrator must return to his army service, he tells Sonny that he has arranged for his wife’s family to take Sonny in. This isn’t ideal, as Isabel’s parents are touchy and hadn’t approved of her marriage to the narrator. Seeming to understand the awkwardness of the situation, Sonny tells the narrator that he wants to leave Harlem (where Isabel’s family lives as well) instead. The narrator notices a worry in Sonny’s eyes that he doesn’t understand, and sees him touching his arm muscle. The narrator insists that Sonny stay in school in Harlem, and reminds him that Isabel’s family has a piano he can use, but the worry remains in Sonny’s face.

Isabel’s letters describe to the narrator how serious Sonny is about his music—she’s worried, even, about the extent of his dedication to it. Finally, Isabel’s family realizes that Sonny hasn’t been going to school and they scold him, which makes Sonny realize that they’ve endured his presence and constant practicing entirely for the sake of the narrator. Sonny can’t bear this knowledge, so he joins the navy and leaves without saying goodbye.

The next time the narrator sees Sonny they are both back in New York after the war, and he feels that Sonny’s life is “weird and disordered,” a problem that the narrator believes is fueled by music. After a terrible fight, the narrator comes to Sonny’s apartment to make up, but Sonny won’t speak to him. He’s surrounded by people whom the narrator notices he treats like family, and Sonny tells the narrator that they’re dead to one another. The narrator recalls that they didn’t speak again until after his daughter died and he sent Sonny the letter in jail.

The narrator quickly describes his daughter Grace’s agonizing death from polio. Isabel saw Grace die, and her nightmares about it still wake her up at night. The narrator doesn’t describe his own grief, but says that the day Grace was buried he wrote to Sonny because “My trouble made his real.”

The story then returns to the present. The narrator is home alone and considering searching Sonny’s room, presumably for drugs. Out his living room window, he sees a revival meeting across the street. The narrator first remarks that these revivals are common but they aren’t saving anyone, but then he notices that the people watching the revival seem changed by the music–they are mesmerized and peaceful. He sees Sonny at the edge of the crowd, and Sonny gives the singers some change.

Sonny comes home and invites the narrator to see him play in the Village that night. The narrator agrees, sensing that he can’t possibly say no. Sonny tells him that hearing the woman across the street sing reminded him of how heroin feels: he says, “It makes you feel—in control. Sometimes you’ve got to have that feeling.” The narrator asks him if he needs heroin to play music, and Sonny explains that it’s not to play music, but in order to stand the world, “in order to keep from shaking to pieces.”

The narrator makes a disparaging comment that all of Sonny’s friends have shaken to pieces, and in response Sonny explains that many of them actually haven’t, at least not yet. Sonny remarks that this is “all any of us can say.” He then comments that the singing woman at the revival must have suffered so much to be able to sing like that, and the narrator says that there’s no way not to suffer. Sonny agrees, but says it’s never stopped anyone from trying.

In this moment, the narrator realizes the harm that his silence while Sonny was in jail has done to their relationship. Sonny continues talking about suffering, saying that while people suffer for no reason, sometimes it’s easier to accept if a person does something to make themselves feel that they’re suffering for something instead of nothing. The narrator argues that it’s better to just accept it outright, and Sonny erupts, telling him that everyone tries not to suffer, and that the narrator is only upset about people who try in ways that aren’t his own.

The narrator tries to frame his statement as a concern that Sonny will die using drugs to try not to suffer, but it falls flat. He yearns to tell Sonny that he will never fail him again, but knows that it would sound like an empty promise after what they’ve been through, so the narrator makes the promise silently to himself. Sonny explains that there’s a storm inside himself and he can’t get rid of it. “When you finally try to get with it and play it,” he says, “you realize nobody’s listening. So you’ve got to listen. You got to find a way to listen.”

Sonny begins to tell the narrator about what the worst of his addiction was like. He talks about doing terrible things to himself and others, and wanting to escape while knowing that his actions were just digging him farther in. He confesses that when their mother died he wanted to leave Harlem to get away from the drugs, but once he ran away and came back everything was still the same. “It can come again,” he warns the narrator.

Sonny and the narrator go to a nightclub downtown (where Sonny is to play that night), and the narrator meets some of Sonny’s musician friends, including a man named Creole. The narrator realizes how beloved and admired Sonny is in this circle of musicians, and he is a little surprised.

Sonny, Creole, and another man begin to play onstage while the narrator watches from a table in the corner. The narrator reflects that it’s very rare for a person to really hear and be moved by music, and when you do, it’s a different experience from playing it. To hear music is a private evocation of personal experience, he believes, but to play it is to bring something new into the world—it’s “more terrible because it has no words, and more triumphant, too, for that same reason.”

The narrator realizes that Sonny is struggling—he’s not fully throwing himself into his music—and the narrator thinks how hard it must be to have to make an instrument come alive. As the band begins the second set, Creole leads them into a different mood and something changes in Sonny’s playing. The narrator realizes that the band is telling the same tale of suffering that everyone has always told, but they’re using their art to keep it new in order to make people listen. The price of searching for a musical language that will communicate suffering is steep—madness, ruin, death—but when a band succeeds, the narrator calls it “the only light we’ve got in all this darkness.”

Hearing Sonny play reminds the narrator viscerally of his own suffering, Sonny’s suffering, and the suffering of generations back—he says he can feel how the stones on the road bruised his mother’s feet, and he can see the moonlit night when his father’s brother died. He begins to cry, and remembers that outside the club the world is still waiting for them with all of its trouble.

When the band pauses, the narrator asks a bartender to take drinks up to the bandstand. The narrator watches her place a glass of scotch and milk on top of Sonny’s piano. Just before they start to play again, Sonny sips from it and meets eyes with the narrator. He puts the glass on top of his piano and begins to play, and the narrator watches the cup shake above Sonny’s head “like the very cup of trembling.”