A prominent, recurring theme in Sonny’s Blues is the conceptual tie between light and dark and the beliefs of the narrator and his brother, Sonny. In the traditional sense, light often symbolizes truth and enlightenment while darkness suggests the abysmal and totally contradicts any notions its opposite may kindle. It can be taken that the narrator chooses the path of light because though he still resides in the same area in which he grew up, he has become an educator and escaped a fate that so many of his peers share: drug abuse and lives filled with debauchery. Sonny, though good hearted by nature, chooses a much less respectable path than his brother. He falls into heroin use that eventually lands him in jail instead of a gig with a jazz band as a great musician, something he aspires to be. The traditional meaning of the contrast between light and dark directly relates to the lives of the two brother’s in Sonny’s Blues because they, in many ways, reflect the brothers themselves by illustrating Sonny as the dark and the narrator as the light by highlighting and comparing the decisions the brothers made until the end of the story.
From the beginning, the narrator introduces the imagery of light and dark that will come to be the dominating theme of the story. In the first scene, the narrator is contemplating Sonny’s fate in the dark subway. The “swinging lights of the subway car” allow him to read about Sonny’s arrest, while the “darkness roared outside” (91). While seemingly just a clever use of diction for nothing more than rhetoric purposes, it soon becomes obvious that the use of the premises of light and dark in the story are the most significant in the story because the relationship between the two concepts mirror the lives of the two brothers. A grade school algebra teacher, the narrator describes many of the boys he teaches as being “filled with rage.” He then says that these boys know only two “darknesses” (92). This illustrates that “the darkness of the movies” had at one time completely blinded these boys to until they came of age and realized the true darkness that hanged over their lives being African American boys of that era (92). This is also the case with the narrator and Sonny. Apparently, though they both realized the true darkness, they chose to deal with it in distinctly different ways. The narrator finished high school, did a tour in the army, and became an educator, while Sonny dropped out of school, joined the Navy underage, and came back to New York and lived in a furnished room in Greenwich Village.
The idea of light and dark plays a significant role in the black society of the 1950s that the narrator and Sonny grew up in. The narrator once speaks of a time when many family members and friends would get together to chat and eat Sunday dinner at his parent’s home after church service. He alludes to the darkness once again by saying that moments would occur when the stark silence of the adults brought on by a serious conversation or a dismal revelation, perhaps about a death in the community or some other dark happening that penetrated the light that they had just before talked and laughed so freely in, threatened to prematurely alert the children of what the world around them was really like (98). At this point, the children are completely oblivious to the racism and other immoralities that thrive in the world they will soon have to venture into, but they are able to sense that something very distasteful is imminent, hence the child wishing that “the hand which strokes his forehead will never stop – will never die” (98). This idea of being an innocent child during a very tempestuous time was more than many young men could cling on to. The narrator was able to escape from the lifestyle many of his childhood friends fell into, but sadly, Sonny was not as fortunate transitioning into adulthood.
Though Sonny had indeed chosen a darker path than his brother, through music, he was eventually able to let the light that was in him shine through the darkness that surrounded him and everyone else he knew. In the final scene, the narrator is seated in a dark corner while Sonny’s first piano accompaniment dimly tells the story of his struggles, but with the help of Creole, Sonny’s second selection tells a brighter tale of the real Sonny and the good that lies within him (111). Though the narrator had at this point achieved more in his life than his brother, through Sonny’s playing, the darkness of both the club and the cloud that hanged over the heads of both Sonny and the narrator was pierced and illuminated by the light Sonny brought forth and opened the narrator’s eyes to an idea to which he had so long been blind to. Though Sonny had done much wrong in his life, he taught his brother that one does not always have to conform to the traditional customs of society to shed light in darkness, but as long as one is able to endure the suffering everyone must undergo without destroying yourself, you are just as good as the next man.
Sonny’s Blues tells the story of the struggle with life and acceptance that many people today face. The narrator has assimilated into society as much as possible, but still understands his limits as a black man. Contrarily, Sonny has never tried to conform and travels a troubled path trying find an outlet for the deep pain and suffering that his status as a permanent outcast forces upon him. Sonny channels his suffering into music and he and his brother are finally able to connect through something in which they never thought existed: the light that Sonny’s dark world birthed.
