"Sonny's Blues" is set in Harlem, a historically African-American neighborhood in New York City. Despite the cultural revival known as the Harlem Renaissance, which flourished in the 1920s, the neighborhood remained impoverished and oppressed in the 1950s, when “Sonny's Blues” is set, Harlem plays an important role in the story, and is depicted as a trap from which the narrator and his brother must struggle to escape is informed of Sonny's imprisonment, remembers their shared past, and then moves to the present for the story's climax. The setting of the story influences how the boys grew up due to the influences they had around them and the expectations that they had. .Say no to plagiarism. Get a custom essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Growing up, the narrator wanted to live a different life than he had lived. Aspires to conform to white culture and live a “safe” lifestyle; in doing so he separates himself from his family and parts of the broader African American culture. When he learns of his brother's imprisonment, he is unable to feel compassion towards Sonny. Likewise, he is unfamiliar with contemporary African-American culture: he admits that he does not know Charlie Parker, a famous jazz musician. He also treats aspects of his heritage with contempt: when he sees a barmaid dancing to something “black and bouncy” he is overcome with contempt. Music plays a huge and complex role in “Sonny's Blues.” Perhaps the most obvious thing is in the title. However, Sonny is a jazz musician, not a blues musician. The narrator explains that the blues is the story “of how we suffer, how we are happy, and how we can triumph.” Jazz, therefore, simply “represents a revision of the blues”. It's one of the "new ways" of expressing the same old blues. So while he plays jazz, Sonny still plays blues. Both blues and jazz are important African American musical forms and as such are appropriate to the story's focus on community. But it's not just Sonny who uses the blues to express himself. Given Baldwin's understanding of the blues, “Sonny's Blues,” the story itself, is a form of the blues. It follows the same essential structure: it begins with a lost and anxious man, follows two brothers growing up together, and ends with a moment of redemption. Baldwin uses the blues to shape his narrative, paralleling Sonny's musical use of the blues. For both, the blues is a means of expressing themselves. Music is Sonny's only way to express himself. Throughout the story he struggles to communicate with a brother who refuses to listen to him. The narrator openly rejects his passion for music and his desire to leave Harlem. The first time in the piece that the narrator actually hears Sonny is during the conversation the brothers have after witnessing the street revival. Hearing the honest and beautiful singing of one of the women opened the brothers to each other and allowed them to communicate. The narrator's moment of redemption occurs as he finally listens to his brother play; Sonny's music allows him to understand his brother's difficulties and through them understand his own. The darkness that threatens Harlem is a symbol of the suffering endured by the community. The narrator describes darkness as what his parents “endure[d]” and what he is destined to “endure.” Darkness is everywhere, waiting outside a subway car, seeping through windows, reflected in a pair of lost eyes. Suffering is, as Sonny explains to his brother, inevitable. Sonny's addiction, Grace's death, and the murder of the narrator's uncle seem to support this statement. Yet suffering has both.