2. Plot overview.

"Sonny's Blues" is narrated in the first-person by an unnamed character, Sonny's brother.  An algebra teacher in a high school in Harlem, this narrator is a stable family man with a wife and two sons. He is seven years older than Sonny and has tried, at various times during their lives, to parent him and to protect him.  The story opens as the narrator, who has been estranged from Sonny for over a year, is on the subway, reading about a drug raid in which Sonny has been arrested and jailed.  As guilt and sorrow wash over him, the narrator is approached by one of Sonny's childhood friends, an addict who blames himself for Sonny's addiction and subsequent arrest.  The narrator and the friend discuss what has happened to Sonny, and we see the narrator begin, with anger, to try to understand how and why Sonny has become an addict. 

The narrator doesn't contact Sonny while he is in prison/rehab until his own daughter, Gracie, dies of polio. When the narrator does finally contact Sonny, Sonny responds immediately, asking for forgiveness, trying to explain how and why he developed his heroin addiction, and expressing his uncertainty over what will happen to him when he is released from prison. When Sonny is released from prison, the narrator brings him back to live with his family in Harlem and begins trying to repair their relationship.

At this point in the story, the narrator flashes back to several scenes that occurred during their young adulthood.  In one scene, their mother asks the narrator to take care of Sonny and to watch out for him when she dies.  She tells him that his own father had had a brother who was very much like Sonny, but who was killed by drunken whites on a rural road in the South. 

In a second flashback, the narrator tells us that following his mother's funeral, the narrator arranges for the teenaged Sonny to live with his fiancée Isabel's family while he is at war.  In a third flashback, Sonny clashes with Isabel's middle- class family, who don't understand his passion for music, his desire to "hang out" downtown with other musicians (both white and black) or his rejection of Isabel's family's values and lifestyle.  He runs away and joins the Navy, goes to Greece and returns to live a Bohemian lifestyle in New York's Greenwich Village. Presumably, he struggles there as a musician and a heroin addict, maintaining a fragile and intermittent relationship with his brother until he is picked up the final time on drug charges.  Following these flashback scenes, we see the brothers trying to repair their relationship, threatened still by Sonny's addiction, which is under control but hovering in the wings, and by the narrator's continuing mistrust and misunderstanding of Sonny's commitment to his music.  As the narrator slowly comes closer to understanding Sonny, Sonny invites him to a nightclub in Greenwich Village, where he is able to witness Sonny in his element, playing the music that helps him remain whole and stay sane.  Here, at the end of the story, the narrator finally begins to understand Sonny's struggle and how music helps him, and his audience, endure and perhaps triumph over it.