According to ADAA, “40 million adults deal with suffering and only 36.9% of those individuals receive treatment.” Sonny’s Blue by James Baldwin, circles a character named Sonny who uses jazz to escape suffering. The narrator and Sonny are both siblings who were raised in Harlem and exposed to drugs and alcohol. Sonny became addicted to heroin while the narrator became educated and formed a family. Neither stayed in touch until the loss of a family member. No one ever understood Sonny's viewpoints. The narrator later sees the bigger picture. The author reveals a theme of suffering and believes that music has the power to minimize suffering.
The narrator and Sonny haven’t seen each other for quite some time. They finally see each other and speak about Sonny's decisions in life. As written from the middle to the end of the passage, Baldwin writes, “But we just agreed, I said, “that there’s no way not to suffer. Isn’t it better, then, just to – that it?” “But nobody just takes it,” Sonny cried, “that’s what I’m telling you! Everybody tries not to. You’re just hung up on the way some people try – it’s not your way!” (41). Come to see that we all have to suffer and put up with it, although you can’t just put up with it. This is important to the passage because it demonstrates the theme and how you can’t just deal with suffering. After all, there is something else.
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Sonny has lived with a narrator for a few weeks and the narrator debates between whether or not to search Sonny’s room. Sonny comes home and invites the narrator to see him perform. They both should up to a small jazz club. The narrator could see how people enjoy and respect Sonny. Sonny goes to the stage with the band and starts to play. The narrator sees Sonny struggle with the music but then his struggle minimizes and he plays. At the end of the passage, it says, “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 on earth. He had made it his: that long line, of which we knew only Mama and Daddy. And he was giving it back, as everything must be given back, so that, passing through death, it can live forever. I saw my mother's face again, and felt, for the first time, how the stones of the road she had walked on must have bruised her feet. I saw 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 tears begin to rise. And I was yet aware that this was only a moment, that the world waited outside, as hungry as a tiger, and that trouble stretched above us, longer than the sky…. For me, then, as they began to play again, it glowed and shook above my brother’s head like the very cup of trembling” (47-48). The narrator speaks about how he is finally able to see who Sonny is and what he has tried to tell them all this time, but then again everything could instantly repeat itself. This quote contradicts the first quote given because it speaks about Sonny's solution to suffering. Not only is the narrator not arguing with Sonny but he is now able to see the bigger picture. This demonstrates the overall plot of how Sonny is struggling with his heroin addiction, although through music he is given the chance to escape that.
Even though the narrator and Sonny are siblings, they differ from each other and struggle to understand each other. The narrator shares Sonny's story with us and how he learned to finally understand Sonny. The author represents a theme of suffering. Sonny can escape ‘darkness’ through jazz. Without this darkness/suffering, we wouldn’t be able to see Sonny's importance to music.
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