Sonny

As readers, we realize that our knowledge of Sonny comes only through the narrator, who has acted largely as Sonny's guardian, a father figure, rather than a brother-peer. The narrator describes Sonny as "wild," but not "crazy." He says Sonny had "always been a good boy, he hadn't ever turned hard or evil or disrespectful, the way kids can, so quick, so quick, especially in Harlem" (Norton Introduction to Literature 48). He compares Sonny to his students: dreamy, disenchanted, and obedient, but struggling against the hopelessness their impoverished lives promise.

Sonny's one hope is that he can become a musician. Discouraged from that goal by his practical minded brother, Sonny agrees to finish high school living with Isabel's family, only because the family has a piano. But he cannot change who he is to satisfy their expectations. At some level, the narrator writes, all of the adults understood that "Sonny was at that piano playing for his life" (Norton Introduction to Literature 61). Pause, Reflect, and

When Isabel's mother discovers Sonny is truant, and "that he'd been down in Greenwich Village, with musicians and other characters in a white girl's apartment" (61), she is frightened for him. The ensuing confrontation, in which Sonny realizes that they have not appreciated or understood, but only endured, his efforts to create something from his music, so saddens and angers him that he flees and enlists in the Navy.

This pivotal flashback scene tells us a lot about Sonny and his family. Sonny is desperately trying to express himself, first to his brother when he reveals his aspirations, and then, through his music. Neither the narrator nor Isabel's family really hear him or understand him: "It was as though Sonny were some sort of god, or monster. He moved in an atmosphere which wasn't like theirs at all. They fed him and he ate, he washed himself, he walked in and out of their door; he certainly wasn't nasty or unpleasant or rude, Sonny isn't any of those things; but it was as though he were all wrapped up in some cloud, some fire, some vision all his own; and there wasn't any way to reach him" (Norton Introduction to Literature 61). Perhaps some of you might think that this description suggests that Sonny was already using drugs at this point; people who are under the influence of mind-altering substance are often described in such terms. But we have