Priyanka Shah
Professor Hunt
HSS 099
1 November 2002
How is it possible that two people grow up together in the same family background and conditions, yet turn out to be strangers? How is it possible that two people who have lived together for many years are strangers to each other at the end? In Sonny’s Blues, two brothers – the narrator and Sonny, grows up together in Harlem, fall apart as they grow older, and live completely different lives. In Lullaby, Ayah feels that Chato, her husband, has remained stranger to her even when they have spend forty years together, facing all the hardships and sufferings given by life.
In Sonny’ Blues, the narrator is the older brother who is conservative, determined, and a kind of family person. Sonny, who is his younger brother, is carefree and undecided about his future plans. It is sometimes very difficult to understand how two people coming from the same background live life completely opposite from each other. As the narrator and Sonny grow into adults, one moves towards “success” and the other moves towards failure. Once when their mother was dead, their lives completely changed. The narrator wants Sonny to finish his school and think about his future seriously. After knowing Sonny’s plans to play jazz music, the narrator is surprised and annoyed. His conservative thinking and definition of success makes him unable to understand his brother’s feelings. He fails to understand that music is Sonny’s life and that’s what he wants to do all his life. That makes him feel that he doesn’t know his brother at all. He is like a stranger to him. The narrator, in some way or the other, wants his brother to be like himself and wants him to do whatever he thinks is safe and right for his future. So Sonny was forced to move in with his brother's fiancée, Isabel, where he has to stay until he finished high school. Sonny starts skipping school and eventually he ceases to go all together. He has been spending all his time with some musicians in a white girl’s apartment. He is scolded and screamed at by Isabel’s mother and that is what breaks him down and he runs away. After that, whenever the two brothers met they always fought awfully. It is hard to not be able to fit into society and that is why Sonny turned to drugs for a sense of belonging. Nobody was aware about this problem until it was too late.
