Sonny's Blues

Sonny's Blues Summary | Detailed Summary

"Sonny's Blues" starts off by chronicling Sonny's brother's shame at his arrest. Riding in the subway, reading it in the newspaper, he is surrounded by lights and faces that only district him from the outer darkness. He feels as though a block of ice is melting in his gut and creates trickles of cold water through his veins. Sonny was picked up for both using and selling. It is not a pretty story and it is one he wants to get out of his mind, but can't. He looks around the playground of his school and believes that Sonny probably tried heroin when he was young, the age of his students.

As he listens to his students' laughter, Sonny's brother realizes that this is not normal child-like laughter- it is mocking, derisive- the kind of laughter that is a reaction to the bitterness and dreariness of life on the streets of Harlem. A boy's whistle rises above the mayhem of their playing. It lingers strong in the chaos.

Looking down on the courtyard, he sees a friend of Sonny's, not someone he particularly likes. Someone who would bum money from him whenever he could. Still, when he goes down to find the Subway, the boy goes along with him. He came to tell him about Sonny. He asks him what is he going to do about his brother? He doesn't know if there's anything to do. He wants to get away from this so-called friend when the boy says something unexpected. He wonders aloud if he was responsible for what happened to Sonny? Why? Because, when Sonny asked him, long ago, what it was like, he told him "it" felt good. Maybe he shouldn't have. He was just telling him the truth.

What will happen to his brother? He asks the boy. Oh, Sonny, will go through some kind of detox, do his time and wind up on the streets again, doing it all over again. He does not like the answer. Why is Sonny doing this? Does he want to die? No, of course not, nobody wants to die. Now he becomes curious but is afraid to ask too many questions. The boy asks for money. Sonny's brother gives him too much, a five dollar bill, which he is afraid to look at.

He didn't write Sonny until after his daughter died. Sonny writes back, grieving with him, telling him that he is sorry for what has happened. He is glad his parents are dead not to see him with this problem. He tries to tell his brother that he must not think he's there because he's a musician. He is trying to think things out but he is confused.

After that note, his brother keeps in touch with him. They meet when Sonny comes back to New York. They talk. There is a seven years difference between them. His brother recalls when he read all the books about the fakirs and yogis and wanted to go to India. He didn't need to, he said. They travel in a cab by Central Park and then through Harlem, revisiting the darkened scenes from their childhood. He takes Sonny to the housing project where he lives. It is not a bad place and close to the school, but still has all the "faceless" drawbacks of a housing project, an unreal place to live.

After dinner, his wife talks to Sonny. They laugh together, while the icy dread permeates his brother again. He recalls how his father was always looking for a safer place for himself and his children but they never found it. After his father died and he came back from the army. She asks him to take care of his younger brother if anything happens to her. Then she tells him about his Daddy's brother which, until, then has been a family secret. When she says this, he notices for the first time that she looks old.

She tells him a story about a young black man, his father's brother, and a musician with a guitar and a voice full of song that, in a terrible moment is run over by some drunken white men. His father watched as his brother and his guitar were rolled over by this angry, moving weapon that quickly disappeared into the night, leaving a shattered body in the darkness.

His mother knew that everyone thought her husband was strong, immoveable, but she helped him live through his hidden tears. That is why she knows that her son must hang onto Sonny, to protect him. A few days later, he gets married but then leaves back to the Army. When he comes back again, it is for her funeral. He talks with Sonny in the kitchen.

Now Sonny tells him his profound secret. He wants to be a musician. Although he pulls it out of him, he wants to be a jazz musician- not a New Orleans style musician like Louis Armstrong but like "Bird," Charlie Parker who is embroiled in a wave of musical creativity, sweeping across Manhattan and the world. Can he make a living at it? Yes, he can- and he must try because it is the only thing he wants to do. That is what life is about- doing what you want to do.

His brother does not take to this idea too well. He probably doesn't agree with it. He watches his brother smoke. Is he doing this defiantly? Sonny tells him he doesn't want to stay in New York anymore. He wants to leave Harlem. His brother doesn't want him to leave. He wants him to stay with him and Isabel while he was still away in the Army. After all, Isabel has a piano.

Sonny's brother hears all about the piano. Sonny plays it after school and before dinner and after dinner and before he would fall asleep. He would play it on weekends when he was not playing records. Sometimes, he would play one record over and over again and play it on his piano. The playing perplexes the household but they accept it, somehow realizing that Sonny "was at the piano playing for his life."

Eventually, Isabel's mother finds a letter from the school. Sonny had been taking off to spend him time in Greenwich Village. Her mother yells at and Isabel, herself, later cries in front of them. He feels exposed. They have gotten to him and to his music. He escapes from them to the Navy and travels, not returning until the end of the war. When they got together, his brother didn't like his friends, his demeanor or his music, which rung discordant to him. They have a fight and Sonny takes out a room. When his brother visits him, he treats his roommates his family and his brother as a stranger. Sonny went to prison in the spring. That fall, little Gracie, his daughter dies. The day she is buried, he writes Sonny in jail.

When Sonny returns, he lives with his brother's family. One day, his brother decides to search his room. While he is thinking about it, he looks down and sees a revival meeting going down on Seventh Avenue below. He thinks of the thousands who have heard the call of rescue but have continued to live, unrescued, on the shattered streets below. He sees his brother below, listening to the music, dropping some money in a plate. Then he tells him the news. He is going to play tonight. His brother knows he cannot refuse.

Sonny tries to tell him about the musicians he knew who took drugs, how they needed it to fight the suffering. Do they all need it? Probably not, but you only hear about the people who break. However, everyone is trying to seek relief from suffering. His brother tries to reach out to him, to help him- but he knows inside it isn't real. Sonny is looking for his answers in his own place. He tries to articulate it- how he found himself alone, stinking, sweating, drowning in his own stench because he couldn't find an answer within himself, because he found it in the drug. He tells him how he had wanted to leave Harlem when he was younger because of the drugs.

He goes to a nightclub and meets Sonny's friends, Creole. Creole plays the bass. There are others, a horn player and a drummer. When Sonny starts, he can't find the music although Creole tries to guide him. He makes barren attempts to find it, but fails on the first piece. However, in the second, he dares to leave his conventional plodding and reach out for the mysterious water beyond. His blues playing comes riveting, real, cosmic, encompassing the destruction and pain of life, the temptations of madness, the comfort and pain of Death, the rising excitement of life in tune with some infinite harmony somewhere beyond the horizon of life and buried in his fabulous music.

His brother gives him a drink, some Scotch and milk, which he places above him on the piano, which he hovers over. He looks at his brother. The cup glows above his head, shaking like "the cup of trembling."